8 ms·

Jumpstarter launches “next-gen hosting”, promising sub-second server spin-up

29 points by ciaranoleary 13y ago

frakkingcylons 13y ago
Couldn't find a link to their site in the article: http://jumpstarter.io/ http://jumpstarter.io/
- laurasanders 13y ago
  Thank you!
  - larrys 13y ago
    On that page all I'm getting is text: "Pricing Tour Support Sign up Login" No links. View source code shows html though. This is on ffox latest and safari latest.
    - zachinglis 13y ago
      Apologies for that. I'm going to put my hand up and say I made a mistake but it's all back now :)
AznHisoka 13y ago
"300,000 requests per month" What counts as a request? A hit to any asset? A connection/
- TruthSHIFT 13y ago
  I'd like to know that as well. It's interesting that they focus on WordPress. A custom WordPress install could potentially have several requests that make up a given page. Wordpress isn't really designed with reducing the requests in mind.
  - laurasanders 13y ago
    A request is a http request. Wordpress is getting increasingly better at keeping requests lower. And it's all up to a user how they optimise; they can get it down to just a couple of requests if they wish.
    - dubcanada 13y ago
      That seems a little weird. Let me put this in context, if I host my server on digitalocean for $5 a month or what ever, and let's say I have 1,000 visitors a day, which is rather small for a blog. And let's say I have a css file, js file, 10 images, and a website. That's 13 http requests assuming that nothing is cached. That translates to 390,000 requests a month (assuming 30 days), which is 90,000 over your 300,000 request limit. So for $50 a month I can't even do what my $5 a month server at digitalocean (and a free server at heroku if we want to compare it) can easily do? You may want to rethink that.
      - laurasanders 13y ago
        It's all relative. We save you time, and make sure your service is always up. We work with you through any pain points you have. If your server goes down, and you lose an hour of your time. You've already lost that difference. You also assume nothing is cached, whereas only if those were all uniques would that be likely. Which is generally unlikely. Our price is based around quality. Both the fact that we grow with you, and the fact that we strive to make every task you need to do, ridiculously easy.
        AznHisoka 13y ago
        Hmm.. I wouldn't be interested then. Seems like this is geared more towards the non-HN audience: people who need their hands to be held.
        laurasanders 13y ago
        It's aimed at anyone who wants their hosting to be easy. It saves time and worry so you can just concentrate on your code without lots of hassle.
nwh 13y ago
Not actually a server that's spinning up though is it?
- DieBuche 13y ago
  You seem to get a locked down VPS. Looks like a Debian distribution, but no root access, no installing packages.
  - laurasanders 13y ago
    Yes. However, it's not a VPS service. The file system is automatically managed by Jumpstarter and upgraded without downtime. The idea of no root access is not to limit you, but because you shouldn't have to worry about administration - we handle it all.
dav- 13y ago
The free development plan is pretty neat, but other than that it just seems like another shared PHP host.
- laurasanders 13y ago
  Far from it. You never have to worry about if other people are being resource intensive for one major reason. And if you got Hacker News'd, rather than punishing you and everyone else – we'd instead give you more resources to deal with it :)
  - mattmanser 13y ago
    If someone got Hacker News'd they'd immediately owe you $799 by the look of those prices. It's like you guys don't know anything about normal website traffic volumes, which isn't a good sign for a host.
    - laurasanders 13y ago
      We won't be charging people extra or forcing them to change their plan if you have a sudden influx of visits from Hacker News or another site. We will consider that a temporary traffic spike and we will be happy that you are in the spotlight rather than trying to charge you more! The plans are based on your usual monthly usage, so if you continued to get the same number of requests monthly, we would talk to you at that point about upgrading.
      - deelowe 13y ago
        In other words, something akin to 95th percentile billing? Odd that you didn't use terms like that in the response. Most experienced hosts or ISPs would.
        laurasanders 13y ago
        We like to talk in plain English and just explain what we mean rather than using jargon terms that everyone might not understand.
laurasanders 13y ago
Hi! Laura from Jumpstarter here. :) Hoping to answer any questions.
- falconfunction 13y ago
  Hi Laura! Where could I find more details/inspiration for your filesystem? It's great to see innovation in that area!
  - laurasanders 13y ago
    Thanks! You can take a look at our technical tour page which has some information on it: http://jumpstarter.io/technical http://jumpstarter.io/technical We have also got a brand new wiki with lots of information, and we'll be continuing to add a lot more to it over the next few weeks: https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/wiki https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/wiki
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  Suggestion more than question. I like your Getting Started wiki page, but it would be good [for me] to break those down into individual pages with either screenshots or replicated HTML5 to show each step of the experience. One quick Hello World example on your tour would help me grok what your product actually offers (or how I would use it) better.
  - laurasanders 13y ago
    Our wiki is brand new this week, so I am glad you like it! If you haven't seen already, you can click on the 'see it in action' button to see a gif that walks you through lots of the setup steps. We'll definitely think about your suggestion for the tour page though. Thanks for the feedback :)
frade33 13y ago
The only metric used by them 'request' is not explained neither through the website nor FAQ found on Github! Good luck with taht. And i really hope it does not mean, what it means. If so it's darn expensive. perhaps more than MT.
- laurasanders 13y ago
  We do need to add it to the website, and to our brand new Github FAQ we're in the process of building. But a request is a http request. :) Thanks for your feedback.
  - frade33 13y ago
    yeah I am aware of it, but my mom does not ;) on a sidenote, you have entered pretty much competitive market with tons of 'major players'. Deep down in our hearts we all know, what 'quality hosting mean'. They are all the same. some of them suck much other less. They all have down time. It's only up to you pay more or less for having almost same service from any of them. You are only good for them as long as, you have steady traffic than spikey ;)
    - laurasanders 13y ago
      That has indeed been the way for many years and a valid worry. And yet, we're changing it. A lot of hosting companies are white labelled without any major differences. Our tech was completely written from the ground up to combat this. As said in the marketing materials; if you have a spike, we handle it fine. We've done intensive testing to make sure that being linked to from Hacker News, or anywhere else that gives you a big influx of traffic, won't make your server go down. We wrote this because we too were tired of the landscape, and we wanted people like ourselves not to have to suffer with this anymore.
      - frade33 13y ago
        i am currently using $20/mo dreampress you know whom. how does it compare to it? I had HN spike, and website (wordpress) was pretty much calm. they say it beats $500/mo wordpress.com VIP and they are a reputable webhost. whom i am using since 2007
sergiotapia 13y ago
I'm very interested in this. Do you guys support Rails 4, PostgreSQL? There are a few icons there in the landing page but no tooltips or anything to let me know what they are. I want something in between DigitalOcean (barebones) and Heroku (configures everything but doesn't let you customize anything either) - this seems like a perfect fit.
- laurasanders 13y ago
  Hi! Thanks for your interest. We don't support Rails and PostgreSQL quite yet, but they are both in our future plans, so we should have support for them soon. You can also make requests on our wiki for frameworks you would like us to support: https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/issues https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/issues
  - zachinglis 13y ago
    I personally want Rails and PostgreSQL too. We've talked about it a lot and its definitely something we're keen on implementing :)

29 points by ciaranoleary 13y ago

frakkingcylons 13y ago

Couldn't find a link to their site in the article: http://jumpstarter.io/ http://jumpstarter.io/

laurasanders 13y ago
Thank you!
- larrys 13y ago
  On that page all I'm getting is text: "Pricing Tour Support Sign up Login" No links. View source code shows html though. This is on ffox latest and safari latest.
  - zachinglis 13y ago
    Apologies for that. I'm going to put my hand up and say I made a mistake but it's all back now :)

AznHisoka 13y ago

"300,000 requests per month" What counts as a request? A hit to any asset? A connection/

TruthSHIFT 13y ago
I'd like to know that as well. It's interesting that they focus on WordPress. A custom WordPress install could potentially have several requests that make up a given page. Wordpress isn't really designed with reducing the requests in mind.
- laurasanders 13y ago
  A request is a http request. Wordpress is getting increasingly better at keeping requests lower. And it's all up to a user how they optimise; they can get it down to just a couple of requests if they wish.
  - dubcanada 13y ago
    That seems a little weird. Let me put this in context, if I host my server on digitalocean for $5 a month or what ever, and let's say I have 1,000 visitors a day, which is rather small for a blog. And let's say I have a css file, js file, 10 images, and a website. That's 13 http requests assuming that nothing is cached. That translates to 390,000 requests a month (assuming 30 days), which is 90,000 over your 300,000 request limit. So for $50 a month I can't even do what my $5 a month server at digitalocean (and a free server at heroku if we want to compare it) can easily do? You may want to rethink that.
    - laurasanders 13y ago
      It's all relative. We save you time, and make sure your service is always up. We work with you through any pain points you have. If your server goes down, and you lose an hour of your time. You've already lost that difference. You also assume nothing is cached, whereas only if those were all uniques would that be likely. Which is generally unlikely. Our price is based around quality. Both the fact that we grow with you, and the fact that we strive to make every task you need to do, ridiculously easy.
      - AznHisoka 13y ago
        Hmm.. I wouldn't be interested then. Seems like this is geared more towards the non-HN audience: people who need their hands to be held.
        laurasanders 13y ago
        It's aimed at anyone who wants their hosting to be easy. It saves time and worry so you can just concentrate on your code without lots of hassle.

nwh 13y ago

Not actually a server that's spinning up though is it?

DieBuche 13y ago
You seem to get a locked down VPS. Looks like a Debian distribution, but no root access, no installing packages.
- laurasanders 13y ago
  Yes. However, it's not a VPS service. The file system is automatically managed by Jumpstarter and upgraded without downtime. The idea of no root access is not to limit you, but because you shouldn't have to worry about administration - we handle it all.

dav- 13y ago

The free development plan is pretty neat, but other than that it just seems like another shared PHP host.

laurasanders 13y ago
Far from it. You never have to worry about if other people are being resource intensive for one major reason. And if you got Hacker News'd, rather than punishing you and everyone else – we'd instead give you more resources to deal with it :)
- mattmanser 13y ago
  If someone got Hacker News'd they'd immediately owe you $799 by the look of those prices. It's like you guys don't know anything about normal website traffic volumes, which isn't a good sign for a host.
  - laurasanders 13y ago
    We won't be charging people extra or forcing them to change their plan if you have a sudden influx of visits from Hacker News or another site. We will consider that a temporary traffic spike and we will be happy that you are in the spotlight rather than trying to charge you more! The plans are based on your usual monthly usage, so if you continued to get the same number of requests monthly, we would talk to you at that point about upgrading.
    - deelowe 13y ago
      In other words, something akin to 95th percentile billing? Odd that you didn't use terms like that in the response. Most experienced hosts or ISPs would.
      - laurasanders 13y ago
        We like to talk in plain English and just explain what we mean rather than using jargon terms that everyone might not understand.

laurasanders 13y ago

Hi! Laura from Jumpstarter here. :) Hoping to answer any questions.

falconfunction 13y ago
Hi Laura! Where could I find more details/inspiration for your filesystem? It's great to see innovation in that area!
- laurasanders 13y ago
  Thanks! You can take a look at our technical tour page which has some information on it: http://jumpstarter.io/technical http://jumpstarter.io/technical We have also got a brand new wiki with lots of information, and we'll be continuing to add a lot more to it over the next few weeks: https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/wiki https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/wiki
peterwwillis 13y ago
Suggestion more than question. I like your Getting Started wiki page, but it would be good [for me] to break those down into individual pages with either screenshots or replicated HTML5 to show each step of the experience. One quick Hello World example on your tour would help me grok what your product actually offers (or how I would use it) better.
- laurasanders 13y ago
  Our wiki is brand new this week, so I am glad you like it! If you haven't seen already, you can click on the 'see it in action' button to see a gif that walks you through lots of the setup steps. We'll definitely think about your suggestion for the tour page though. Thanks for the feedback :)

frade33 13y ago

The only metric used by them 'request' is not explained neither through the website nor FAQ found on Github! Good luck with taht. And i really hope it does not mean, what it means. If so it's darn expensive. perhaps more than MT.

laurasanders 13y ago
We do need to add it to the website, and to our brand new Github FAQ we're in the process of building. But a request is a http request. :) Thanks for your feedback.
- frade33 13y ago
  yeah I am aware of it, but my mom does not ;) on a sidenote, you have entered pretty much competitive market with tons of 'major players'. Deep down in our hearts we all know, what 'quality hosting mean'. They are all the same. some of them suck much other less. They all have down time. It's only up to you pay more or less for having almost same service from any of them. You are only good for them as long as, you have steady traffic than spikey ;)
  - laurasanders 13y ago
    That has indeed been the way for many years and a valid worry. And yet, we're changing it. A lot of hosting companies are white labelled without any major differences. Our tech was completely written from the ground up to combat this. As said in the marketing materials; if you have a spike, we handle it fine. We've done intensive testing to make sure that being linked to from Hacker News, or anywhere else that gives you a big influx of traffic, won't make your server go down. We wrote this because we too were tired of the landscape, and we wanted people like ourselves not to have to suffer with this anymore.
    - frade33 13y ago
      i am currently using $20/mo dreampress you know whom. how does it compare to it? I had HN spike, and website (wordpress) was pretty much calm. they say it beats $500/mo wordpress.com VIP and they are a reputable webhost. whom i am using since 2007

sergiotapia 13y ago

I'm very interested in this. Do you guys support Rails 4, PostgreSQL? There are a few icons there in the landing page but no tooltips or anything to let me know what they are. I want something in between DigitalOcean (barebones) and Heroku (configures everything but doesn't let you customize anything either) - this seems like a perfect fit.

laurasanders 13y ago
Hi! Thanks for your interest. We don't support Rails and PostgreSQL quite yet, but they are both in our future plans, so we should have support for them soon. You can also make requests on our wiki for frameworks you would like us to support: https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/issues https://github.com/jumpstarter-io/help/issues
- zachinglis 13y ago
  I personally want Rails and PostgreSQL too. We've talked about it a lot and its definitely something we're keen on implementing :)