Slicehost Blog

Joyent Accelerators ( http://www.joyent.com ) are flexible, and they're the "official" Ruby on Rails host. They also happen to offer the best control panel (Virtualmin, of course). The only negative might be that Accelerators are Solaris systems--I don't have any complaints about that, but if you're accustomed to Linux, it might be a bit of a learning curve.

Slicehost ( http://www.slicehost.com ) has a good reputation. Their Xen systems are not over-subscribed and they know their business.

Media Temple (http://www.mediatemple.com ) had a good reputation until recently...but I'm sure it was a temporary setback. They're technically savvy. They're using a kind of quirky virtualization layer (Virtuozzo) which, when over-subscribed even a little bit (and sometimes even when not), exhibits serious memory issues.

Gridzones ( http://www.gridzones.com ) is another Solaris zones based host, and they have some reasonable plans. It's a smaller shop, so probably gives more personal service. Tell Phil that Joe from Virtualmin sent you (I dunno if it'll get you a discount, but he'll be happy to hear from you). They start at $15, which is hard to beat (you probably want more space than that, though...). They're also Virtualmin friendly, when appropriate (i.e. when you have enough space/memory for full service hosting).

If you're wanting to spend a little more, The Planet and Server Beach both offer dedicated boxes starting at around $69, I think. I've used both for years with…

Summary: They need more smart and less machine.

You can try an instance out for a day or two and just cancel your account. I ended up canceling my test instance but am thinking of trying it again to see how they did with the node stuff.

Frankly they are just as much of a pain in the butt to get everything working as before they were rebranded as SmartMachines from Accelerators or whatever they where called before Joyent bought textdrive.

I also find the documentation lacking compared to the excellent tutorials that slicehost provides and this is kind of a big deal if you are not familiar with Solaris.

see: http://wiki.joyent.com/all-accelerators:kb:start

vs: http://www.slicehost.com/community

I don't know what they have been doing for the last 5 years but it sure has not been working on their docs or writing their own nifty control panel software because they just install a skinned version of webmin for you. Yay, webmin...

They do claim to be faster than the other virtualization platforms like xen and it might be true because Solaris Zones are pretty sexy but again there is a learning curve and you have to use Solaris. EC2 and the other VM based hosting guys give you much more flexibility and if you just want to host rails then it's going to be about 100 times more of a pain[1] than just using Heroku. If I'm going to overpay I will take time saving vs a little performance any day.

[1] http://wiki.joyent.com/shared:installing-rails

37signals made a bad decision with this, in my opinion. They don't emphasize the expensive packages first, to make the cheaper packages seem more affordable. They make the one you want huge, and the 49 dollar price, at first glance, seems expensive. If they emphasized or drew your eye to the $149 package first, by the time you get to the package you want, at 1/3rd the cost you were looking at before, you'd be more inclined to feel it is a good deal.

Look at WuFoo's design, they do an incredibly great job at the price chart, and they can back up their decisions with data.

http://wufoo.com/signup/

On the other hand, if your service is not something you're trying to upsell people on based on gimmicky features, I strongly suggest following the Slicehost model: http://www.slicehost.com/ They know you know what you need, so they very plainly list all of the plans and their prices with no gimmicky sales bullshit. I love them for that.

For a VPS/dedicated where you're manually operating the server and database, #3 is generally given.

I run a couple of small boxes on Slicehost http://slicehost.com/ and their management interface allows you to bring up new boxes / close down boxes as you need, manage your DNS records, and etc.

If you require shell support, they do have an API to their management interface http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/3/26/announcing-the-slicehost-api — I've played with it just once, in Python, and found it to be extremely accessible.

The couple times I've needed support, I got resolved within less than an hour. Generally, I find that I can resolve minor issues within their management interface (reboot an instance, get shell access via browser if you have broken SSHD, etc.).

I agree with the sentiments expressed by many others, and send a huge thank you to the SliceHost crew for offering great service over the past few years.

I've had a SliceHost account since 2008, and a RackSpace account since 2009. I've run servers on both platforms, I've taken a look at the different features and I decided to choose SliceHost.

RackSpace might indeed be cheaper and offer more features, but I chose SliceHost because it is quick, easy to use and gets the job done.

One of the things that sold me on using SliceHost in the first place was your non-SLA SLA, http://www.slicehost.com/questions/#sla

SliceHost has a lot of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie, the RackSpace site has a lot of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Along with S3 for large static content,

- Make sure your MySQL queries are optimized (use EXPLAIN SELECT to make sure indexes are being used as you intend)

- If you end up needing a dedicated server, look at a service that can automatically provision servers in a matter of hours (such as http://www.theplanet.com). Or go with something like (http://www.slicehost.com), which can set you up in minutes.

- If you need to change servers in a rush, you can leave your DNS with Dreamhost; just set up a subdomain like 's2.wonderwrap.com' that resolves to your new server, and redirect requests for wonderwrap.com to s2.wonderwrap.com

- I think you'll be fine! Good luck