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What hosting provider are you using for your startup ?
- sajid 20y agoI'm looking for a hosting provider who offers a full server package with root access. The server should run Fedora or Red Hat Linux with at least 1Gb ram. Any suggestions ? The cheapest provider I can find offers the above for about $120 per month (with unlimited bandwidth).
- dpapathanasiou 20y agoWe use Server Beach -- http://serverbeach.com/ http://serverbeach.com/ -- and have had few problems. They have a wide range of options, with several servers under $100 per month, but they limit bandwidth to 2,000 gb of transfer per month. We find the 2,000 is a lot, though, (we've come close, but yet to go over), and you can control it further by using AWS.
- sajid 20y agoThanks, that's great :-) Theye're very good value for maoney and the bandwidth limits are reasonable too.
- jey 20y agoThe value servers from aplus.net are pretty good. They're last-gen hardware for cheap. I have a 2.5 GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM and a 120GB HDD for $50/mo.
- sajid 20y agoInteresting ... they're very cheap and the standard servers are not bad either.
- robertgaal 20y agoAre you looking for a Rails host or...?
- walesmd 20y agoYou have some pretty strict requirements there - I am curious as to why. Is your app really that complex where you require these services or are you planning ahead for scaling issues? Personally, I go with Dreamhost. The price is right, their service is awesome, and customer support is willing to help you with whatever you need. If scaling becomes an issue - then go looking for a dedicated host. For 90% of the startups that launch, scaling will never become an issue.
- sajid 20y agoIt's not a scaling issue, I just prefer to be in control of the server.
- sabat 20y agoVirtual hosting is always an option, then -- cheaper than having to pay for a physical server (or its rental). And eventually we'll have Amazon E2 ... eventually ... and with that, you can control the (virtual) server and deal with scaling issues.
- petercooper 20y agoI use SoftLayer http://www.softlayer.com/ http://www.softlayer.com/ .. I used to use EV1 but since they merged with The Planet they've not been as good. SoftLayer is made up of many of the "old" The Planet guys and offer some amazing stuff like free private LAN between your servers. Of course you're going to start at no less than $150 per month, and I spend almost $1000 a month, but.. this is business and you have to pay to get the goods. People who run their businesses on naff shared hosting are crazy unless they think the odd hour of downtime here or there is acceptable. Of course, shared hosting or a VPS (my personal recommendation if your budget is small) is a good way to start, but once you make revenue, it's time to upgrade :)
- sajid 20y agoOuch ! They're expensive ... but as you say, maybe when it's time to upgrade.
- scaz 20y agoSoftLayer is indeed very good. The virtual LAN is awesome - you can even setup a PPTP VPN connection and access your virtual LAN from it. VPN in your gateway box at home and it is almost like having the servers in the other room. They don't charge you anything for data that goes over the VPN, so you can upload/download from your server without using your bandwidth quota - it is a great for pulling off site backups.
- plusbryan 20y agolikebetter.com's on softlayer and we're happy
- kogir 20y agoWhy not just co-locate a box of your own? What I did: Assemble random crap box from parts (Athlon 2100+, 512 MB RAM, 80GB HDD) This was free for me, and should be cheap or free for you. It was also two years ago, so you can probably find better hardware now. Leave box at parents' house using cable modem for 2 months (free, but slow) Co-locate box at Sprocket Data in Dallas for 6 months ($60/mo for 100 GB traffic, 100 mbps burst) Then things changed a lot, but my startup has always owned all the equipment. I like being able to fix problems myself when needed.
- sabat 20y ago"Why not just co-locate a box of your own?" "Co-locate box at Sprocket Data in Dallas for 6 months ($60/mo for 100 GB traffic, 100 mbps burst)" Because it's too expensive when you're just starting out. I could afford $60/mo, for instance (because I'm older and have lots of kizzash) but I'm hosted for $8/mo with 1.5TB of throughput. If your site gets much traffic, you'll be over 60GB before you know it. :-o
- spiralhead 20y agoproblem with the $8/mo-type services is that you're limited as to what sort of tech you can use
- sabat 20y agoTrue, although some providers are more liberal than others. Dreamhost lets you run your own stuff, like ruby, php, rails, etc. But yeah, it's a limited environment, and you're sharing. When you're first starting out, you may not care about that. But eventually ...
- dpapathanasiou 20y agoThe other big downside is that you can't just go in and kill an errant process if your alpha version does something weird. And you're also in the dark about what those other processes (those not owned by you) might be doing at any given time. Controlling the entire server as root is just better.
- arete 20y agoTry a Xen VPS, you get full control of your own OS image with no hardware to worry about. Amazon EC2 is Xen-based but you can find much better prices. I recommend serveraxis.com where you can get a VPS with 1GB of RAM and unlimited bandwidth @ 10mbit/s for $130/m (or $45 for 200GB/m).
- sajid 20y agoAnother interesting option and cheap too, thanks.
- gustaf 20y agoPrimarily Serverbeach. Have one server with Layered Tech and one with Linode for internal
- juwo 20y agoGlorb. Great Value, Great Service http://glorb.com http://glorb.com
- npk 20y agoI just found http://www.linode.com http://www.linode.com and it looks like a winner. $20/month you get a virtual server (so w/ root access.) 256mb ram, 8Gib disk, 100Gib/month $20 1gb ram, 32 gib disk, 400gib/month $80
- dawie 20y agoI went with MediaTemple. They are cheap and seem to offer scaling possibilities. Some people have warned me about them here on YC. I haven't launched yet, so I can't really give you feeback on them
- phuson 20y agoJust wondering...what's wrong with MediaTemple?
- PStamatiou 20y agoI'm on a (dv) 3.0 rage and it's great. With plesk and root ssh I can do anything, even install another OS. default is RHEL.
- create_account 20y agoSo you control the entire server as root, you get 1 TB of bandwidth, and it's $50 a month? Wow, that's the best combination so far... they do skimp on RAM and HD size, compared to some of the others. Is it too good to be true? What disadvantages or problems have other people seen?
- mattculbreth 20y agoFuture Hosting at http://futurehosting.biz http://futurehosting.biz
- scaz 20y agoI have to advise against these guys. Hate to do it, because the support is good, they seem like nice guys, and they are reselling SoftLayer servers, so the network is amazing. But I've had VPS's on three different physical servers with them and they were all starved for disk IO. They take quad core servers with 16-32GB of RAM but only put two 7200 RPM IDE drives in them. A 7200 RPM IDE drive is good for about 120 I/Os per second, so if the server has 20 users you get a whopping 6 I/Os per second. Check it out: $ time ls -l /etc /dev/null real 0m12.530s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.046s 12.5 seconds to list a directory with ~150 files. This is from a VPS account I have with them with nothing running on it. To be fair, most VPS hosting probably sucks just as bad.
- mattculbreth 20y agoHmm, never noticed poor disk performance. I'm not doing much with the server besides web and SVN right now, but it's something to keep in mind. Thanks. Good guys though.
- sbraford 20y agoLayeredTech.com. You get a big bang for your buck. Service? It's ok. Totally unmanaged, so don't expect much on that front.