19 ms·
Chart of YC companies' hosting decisions, 2010 edition
- daniel_levine 16y agoI'm not affiliated with the company in anyway, but I'm a big fan of http://iwantmyname.com/ http://iwantmyname.com/ for domain registration. Super quick and easy especially if you're using Heroku or GAE. It's depressing how little GoDaddy has innovated and how dominant it still is.
- jf 16y agoMany people expressed the same sentiment when I posted this last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746386 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746386 I did note a small reduction in the percentage of YC domains registered with GoDaddy, but nothing significant. :/
- olalonde 16y agoFor me, a domain name is a commodity, so I go for the cheapest: GoDaddy.
- staunch 16y ago1and1 is almost always cheaper than GoDaddy. Currently it's $4.99 for the first year and $8.99 afterwards. GoDaddy is $11.99 per year.
- dangrossman 16y agoYou never have to pay full retail at GoDaddy. Not for .com at least. There's at least one coupon available 365 days a year; check retailmenot.com.
- gommm 16y agoIt is but I value my time more than the one dollar difference between GoDaddy and namecheap... I don't want to spend time navigating through all the bunch of upsell crap from GoDaddy and then pulling my hair dealing with their awful dns settings...
- ohashi 16y agoI pay nearly at registration costs elsewhere. Godaddy isn't the cheapest. Godaddy has done the most/best marketing, that's all.
- olalonde 16y agoI'm surprised Slicehost is not present. Perhaps is it included in Rackspace?
- redstripe 16y agoPerhaps. Heroku clients seem to be included in the amazon group based on the SSL cert.
- jf 16y agoYes. I give my justifications for doing so in this commit: https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/commit/b00aba5d6410210b5cfb0f25387254fa475163ce https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/commit/b00aba5d641021... Should I keep them separate?
- pclark 16y agoIHMO, yes.
- mdda 16y agoPlease split them out. What many people here are looking for is a snapshot of the choices a group of smart people have made : Going to rackspace.com is a whole different choice than heading over to slicehost.com.
- jf 16y agoMakes sense. I'll do that after I'm done with the meeting I'm in now. Edit: Changed. However, the number of companies with A records in netblocks that are owned by "Slicehost" is pretty small. Perhaps Rackspace has been working on changing the names on the Slicehost netblocks?
- jedsmith 16y agoNo: http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=173.203.218.200?showDetails=true&showARIN=false http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=173.203.218.200?showDetail... That's embed.ly - they're at Slicehost, but you still have them at Rackspace even after this change. Your script might be confused because the /24 is a reassigned child of Rackspace's /16. I've parsed WHOIS in the past and the corner cases make a very solid argument for just doing it by hand. IP ownership issues, which you've already seen with Linode, make it almost exclusively a wet code problem. There's a few nagging questions with the list from a casual skim, too, one of them being octopart.com - 64.71.142.178 is part of a reassigned /28 out of a Hurricane /18, which means Octopart likely hosts themselves. I have doubts you get a /28 from Hurricane with their shared hosting, but their sales page does list a static address (singular). Shrug.
- redstripe 16y agoSo despite the vociferous defense app engine received here about a month ago after some criticism it looks like no YC companies actually use it?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- noahc 16y agoI think a large part of this has to do with programming language choice. I suspect there is a large group of ruby hackers out there who can only use Amazon, and not GAE.
- simonw 16y agoA survey of language choice by YC companies would be interesting - I think Python is actually very well represented. I'd guess that the reason people aren't using AppEngine is more that it's strategically a pretty bad idea. You can't move off it, and its constraints have a major effect on how you design and architect your application. When you're still figuring out what your product is, using a platform that requires you to design your data storage to fit the queries you are going to run isn't necessarily that smart.
- aelsheshai 16y agoI second that. Wouldn't be hard to add the languages.
- robryan 16y agoWasn't data access very slow up until recently? From the outside I question how important GAE is to Google, has it got a decent sized team behind it and will it always be around. With Amazon cloud hosting seems much more of a key business. Of course this is from the outside if I were considering options, I don't use either of them.
- illumen 16y agounless exit.goal == google.buy(self)
- klochner 16y agoAnyone that's self-hosting email care to explain why they're doing it? Seems like something that makes no sense to do internally until you start getting more "enterprisey".
- onteria 16y agoI don't personally host my own email, but I can see it from the perspective of data control. If you use Google Apps for example, your email exists on their servers. I personally don't mind that, but others may not be so welcoming. Also if you want a more detailed email setup with regards to routing and filters, it may be difficult / costly in finding a provider.
- lisper 16y agoI'm not affiliated with a YC company, but I do self-host my email. My reasons: 1. I'm a control freak and a privacy freak. I don't trust any third party with my email. I want to know how things work under the hood. And if I want to make a change, I don't want to have to depend on any third party to do it. 2. It's not hard to do. apt-get install postfix and dovecot, invest a couple of hours munging config files, and you're done. 3. Much easier to transition your data if you do get "enterprisey." All your data is on your server, so you can just tar it up and ship it anywhere. 4. You can configure the server so that insecure connections are not possible, making it that much less likely that someone will leak a password accidentally. 5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers.
- maukdaddy 16y ago2. It's not hard to do. apt-get install postfix and dovecot, invest a couple of hours munging config files, and you're done Bullshit. There's troubleshooting when things go wrong, patching, maintenance, etc. edit: don't forget adding additional storage, managing spam and malware filtering, user admin, backups, and other tasks. 5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers. You wish. Your single server is much easier to target and break into than Google's.
- birken 16y agoVery surprising so many people use Godaddy for their DNS, given it is very slow as far as DNS servers go. I've been running a Pingdom speed/reliability test for a few popular DNS servers for the past few months, and here is the data: Guide: <dns provider> <uptime %> <downtime> <outages> <avg speed> October: Godaddy DNS 100.00% 0h 00m 00s 0 68 ms Dynect SMB 100.00% 0h 00m 00s 0 31 ms DNSMadeEasy 100.00% 0h 00m 00s 0 39 ms November: Godaddy DNS 100.00% 0h 00m 00s 0 67 ms Dynect SMB 100.00% 0h 00m 00s 0 26 ms DNSMadeEasy 99.98% 0h 10m 00s 1 43 ms December: Godaddy DNS 99.99% 0h 05m 00s 1 58 ms Dynect SMB 100.00% 0h 00m 00s 0 28 ms DNSMadeEasy 99.00% 7h 25m 00s 22 40 ms So basically Godaddy DNS is reliable but slow, DNSMadeEasy is relatively fast but had some uptime troubles in December, and Dynect (Dyn Inc) is fast + super reliable. As for pricing: - Godaddy DNS is free (I think?) - DNSMadeEasy runs about $2-5/month (max of 10 million queries/month) - Dynect SMB runs between $30-95/month depending on what you need (max of 1.8 million queries/month)
- jreposa 16y agoDynect has been super fast and reliable for us. Their customer service is also top notch. If your serious about availability, this is the place to start.
- jasonemerick 16y agoAny data on Amazon's route53 DNS offering?
- birken 16y agoNope, it was just these 3 (as we were deciding between DNSMadeEasy and Dynect, and wanted to throw Godaddy in there for comparison). Although we currently use DNSMadeEasy, and due to the uptime issues we might be looking to switch at which point I'll cast a broader net. Of course if you have a pingdom account, setting up these DNS checks is quite easy. They have a special monitoring type just for DNS.
- russmeaculp 16y agoWhat uptime issues? We have used DNS Made Easy for over 8 years and have never seen any uptime problems at all. Checking one name server through Pingdom is not giving you a detailed review of name servers. You could have checked another name server in Dynect and they could of had twice as much downtime... but still Dynect was up. Showing one name server is good, but it is not judging a providers "downtime". Would be much more useful if you tested all name servers. If several were down at once then yes... there is a good chance that you could loose a query. Thanks for the efforts though.
- onteria 16y agoOh, a bit of a side note on hosting for startups. I know many people want to save costs by centralizing hosting, but as a word of advice keep your database, mail, and web servers separated. By not doing so you've created a single point of failure. Not only that, but it makes securing things appropriately more difficult (ie. you are unable to create only web server specific firewall rules for the server).
- bobfunk 16y agoA good trick we've been using while building http://www.webpop.com http://www.webpop.com has been to use the cheap small instances on the Rackspace cloud to build a mini version of a nice distributed setup with load balancers, web servers, database servers, monitoring, etc... The small instances are very cheap, and we've been automating everything with chef, so it's east for us to gradually scale up by adding large instances to our cluster instead of small ones. This means we've been able to build a scalable and secure infrastructure, that didn't cost us much more than a hundred bucks a month during development.
- jamroom 16y agoWe've been doing the same thing on Linode, and initially did our development on Rackspace cloud. One important thing to note about Rackspace cloud is that your private network bandwidth is limited to 10mbps when you're on their small Xen instances - this may not be a big deal during development, but after you go live if you have any traction, then with simultaneous backups, sql replication, and any other chatter that might be happening between servers, it can really "slow down", and you might end up having to move to larger instances simply for the port speed, even though your existing server is sufficient in regards to CPU, RAM and disk. Our testing ended up leading us back to Linode, since with a simple support ticket you can up your private interface to the full 100mbps. So our "combo" ended up being Linode + Amazon S3 (since for many of our items the reduced redundancy storage is sufficient, and is half the price of could files). It's sure fun though setting up your own small "cloud" system ;)
- c2 16y agoLoopt is self hosted? Is that actually cost effective? I can understand a company like justin.tv being self hosted, but loopt makes less sense to me.
- seiji 16y agoAs far as I know, Loopt is a 100% Microsoft shop. When they started, large scale hosted Windows subletting wasn't wide spread.
- kogir 16y agoIt still isn't if you want to be using the latest and greatest. Even Amazon only offer Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. We're using the R2 editions of both.
- PonyGumbo 16y agoI've been really curious about this - how do you like it? I've got a couple of Win2k8 cloud servers at Rackspace right now, but I'm entertaining other options.
- kogir 16y agoWe're not 100% Microsoft. Probably 80% though. We do it for security and privacy reasons. It matters less now, but for getting early carrier deals it was key, and now those agreements still bind us. I use Amazon EC2 personally and would love to use it for more at Loopt, but can't.
- blahpro 16y agoI’m surprised that no–one is using Linode.
- Encosia 16y agoSurprised to see no one using Linode.
- lacker 16y agoOur company (Gamador) is listed as hosting from "Global Net Access LLC" which I had never heard of - we just use Linode. So there might be some Linode undercounting going on.
- mgrouchy 16y agoI was going to mention, I found it hard to believe there wasn't a single Startup using Linode.
- ig1 16y agoI believe Global Net Access LLC owns the subnet of IP addresses that Linode use.
- jf 16y agoI updated my script to take that into account. The page has has been updated to reflect that change.
- drm237 16y agoLinode's Fremont DC is owned by Hurricane Electric which is also being mis-represented.
- jamesheroku 16y agoHeroku IPs are 75.101.163.44, 75.101.145.87, and 174.129.212.2, if you want to update the script to make the distinction from raw Amazon EC2.
- haribilalic 16y agoI'd like to move my email away from Google Apps, for various reasons, but they have the best spam filter by far. It's worth sticking with them just for that.
- andreaja 16y agoWould you care to elaborate? I'm just getting to grips with Google Apps and would be interested in what experiences others have had with it.
- xsc 16y agoSeems like a few companies have chosen WebFaction for email hosting. Any specific reason?
- bco 16y agoI was wondering the same thing. Maybe they started out on WebFaction before moving to a VPS or cloud server and decided to keep their email there?
- philfreo 16y agoDoesn't YC have a special discount with one or more of the hosting providers, which might be influencing decisions?
- Sukotto 16y agoI'm interested in seeing aggregates of technology choices like: primary database, main programming language(s), frameworks, etc
- bradleyland 16y agoI'd love to see that too, but it's not something you can easily identify just by querying their web server. This list was compiled using the domain-profiler tool: https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler
- vaksel 16y agoI think it's very telling that something like 60% of YC companies have a SSL certificate...means they are most likely processing some financial transactions, so they charge their users directly it's also interesting that so many are using the hurricane electric host...never even heard of them before
- jonknee 16y agoOr they like to handle logins properly.
- jf 16y agoOr that they paid attention when Firesheep came out.
- lftl 16y ago> it's also interesting that so many are using the hurricane electric host...never even heard of them before I'm fairly sure Linode's West coast datacenter is in a Hurricane Electric facility so imagine those are simply Linode customers.
- lambda 16y ago
- RobertL 16y agoA good reference link. Heroku up to 114k hosted apps now but still lumped into the "other" category for web hosting. It's growing fast though.
- tsycho 16y agoI am surprised to see no heroku.
- tedunangst 16y agoLook at the SSL column for *.heroku.com. They are all listed as using AWS for web hosting.
- dguido 16y agoI love that despite all the Firesheep business, about half of the companies on that list don't even own an SSL certificate. :-(
- dsmithn 16y agoGoogle Apps uses Go Daddy for domain registration. Would that be why there are similar number of Google Email users and Go Daddy Registrars?
- aneth 16y agoGreat to see godaddy successfully disrupting the ripoff ssl certificate market.
- dtran 16y agoThis is pretty cool Joel! Small nitpick - Zerigo is spelled incorrectly as "Zeroigo".
- xhtmlweaver 16y agoi am very surprised that linode is not in the chart for webhosting section! something must be wrong
- ghshephard 16y agoI find this chart fascinating - though I'm wondering how much of Rackspace is Rackspace "Cloud" and how much of Rackspace is "VPS". Also, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of SoftLayer as a server hosting company - I wonder what the attraction there is. For Web Hosts it comes (roughly) to: o Amazon EC2 o Rackspace Cloud o Self Hosted (Surprisingly large number) o Slicehost o Hurricane Electric (which is likely self hosted? EDIT (per jedsmith) Linode?) Two things I found very, very surprising. #1 - Small use of Linode #2 - How much Rackspace is used more than Slicehost. Anybody care to comment on why SoftLayer is so predominant?
- jedsmith 16y agoThe small use of Linode is a mistake in the script.
- callmeed 16y ago> Anybody care to comment on why SoftLayer is so predominant? My guesses are: (a) they provide dedicated servers that are comparable to Rackspace but at a lower cost (but with a support trade-off), (b) they also offer cloud computing and storage instances that are decent (in my experience).
- nwilkens 16y agoI operate a server management company. We we have worked with many providers, including all of those listed. We continue to recommend Softlayer for leased dedicated hardware needs because of the features they provide, and the solid network infrastructure (although they do have hiccups on occasion). Softlayer has a great support team, fast server deployment (1-2 hours) and full management capabilities - power strip reboot, IPMI KVM, OS reloads, etc..
- jjoe 16y agoI wouldn't trust Softlayer with my clients' data. Look at what happened to SimpleCDN and others. In a matter of a couple of days Softlayer pulled the plug on all their servers. SimpleCDN was erased from the CDN map. They used to have over 100 servers with them. Regards
- jim_h 16y agoI don't see any prgmr.com hosting. I've seen it mentioned quite a few times in when people were looking for hosting.
- AdamGibbins 16y agoprgmr will appear has Hurricane Electric ash thats who I believe provide all their IP space.
- callmeed 16y agoSo, no YC companies on Rails use Heroku? (or is that lumped into Amazon?)
- ivankirigin 16y agoMissing are data stores. Web store isn't the same thing. I'd like to see the percentage that use S3.
- Aegean 16y agowhat is the catch with google as email hosting? we use rackspace, it seems nobody is using rackspace for email. What is the criteria in choosing email hosting?
- damoncali 16y agoGoogle Apps email is free and easy. The paranoid will not use it, because Google can read your email, possibly with good reason.
- jedberg 16y agoIs this only pre-acquisition companies? Where's reddit? ;) FWIW: Web Host: EC2 (Amazon) Email Host: Self hosted DNS Host: Akamai Registrar: Corporation Service Company SSL Issuer: None Certificate Type: None
- jf 16y ago> Is this only pre-acquisition companies? Yes, it's a "List of active Y Combinator startups that haven't exited yet." https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/blob/master/ycombinator-list https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/blob/master/ycombinat...
- code_duck 16y ago"Corporation Service Company" has to be one of the most generic names ever.
- d_r 16y agoI'm surprised not to see more alternatives to GoDaddy for registrars (say, NameCheap.) GoDaddy interface and upselling are simply infuriating and I've always thought of it as a "Wal-Mart for domains/etc," not something a tech-savvy startup would use.
- bauchidgw 16y agobest charts ever
- corin_ 16y agoSurprised to see none of them using Route 53. Suspect that won't be the case in a year's time.
- shooll 16y agoDear friends, do you want to have some different things? Whether you want to give your relatives and friends, take a few different exotic gifts? Whether you want to buy some cheap benefits of thing? So please, let us begin now! Click on our website (=== http://www.findsoso.com http://www.findsoso.com =====) Will bring you different surprise === http://www.findsoso.com http://www.findsoso.com ===== === http://www.findsoso.com http://www.findsoso.com ===== === http://www.findsoso.com http://www.findsoso.com ===== === http://www.findsoso.com http://www.findsoso.com ===== === http://www.findsoso.com http://www.findsoso.com ===== === http://www.findsoso.com http://www.findsoso.com =====
- eurohacker 16y agowould have been even better if the "language decisions" would also be included - what programming language each startup has
- nopassrecover 16y agoSurprised how few of these I knew, considering I read HN pretty regularly