Why Hosting Rails is ahead of the curve

My web hosting adventures have spanned several different hosts over the years. I started off with Lunarpages - I did my research and found that they were consistently touted in the reviews that I had read. At the time (this is no longer the case), with a shared hosting account on Lunarpages you could host only one domain without paying extra money. As I started wanting things like the ability to quickly and easily host additional domains, get a dedicated IP addresses and SSH access, it seemed that Lunarpages no longer met my needs. So then I switched to Godaddy and got a virtual dedicated server (VDS or VPS) with the Plesk control panel. With this, I felt like I had more control. However, as I learned more about web hosting, I started to see how the Plesk control panel was getting in the way for me. There was a limitation in how many domains I could add with my plan (if I wanted to add more, I’d have to shell out more money) and I got worried that if I upgraded certain packages on the VDS, that it would break Plesk. So I started looking into VDSes without a control panel. I had installed a linux distribution on my local machine and thought that I would be able to handle the administration of a web server from the command line. That’s when I found Slicehost through a recommendation in an IRC channel. Slicehost offers VDSes with dedicated resources (memory and CPU allocation) and you get to choose your linux distribution. Starting at just $20, this is a really good deal in my opinion. I had full control of my VDS including which packages and versions I wanted to install and I could also host as many domains as I wanted by using virtual hosting on either Apache or Lighttpd (I tried both). However, all this control came at a sharp price to me. I had to spend a lot of time learning linux commands, managing packages and figuring out optimal configurations.

I was still fairly happy with Slicehost and I wasn’t planning on switching hosts again. I had a couple of Ruby on Rails applications that I wanted to launch and I was having a really hard time with deployment. I figured that I could find an inexpensive managed server host for just my Rails apps. I did a search in Google and found Hosting Rails. I asked about them in the #rubyonrails IRC channel and heard positive things about them, so I went ahead and signed up for a plan.

It turns out that I didn’t realize all the features I was getting until I actually started using it (yes, I know that they’re all laid out on the home page). With hosting plans starting at $2.88 per month, you get all the expected programs – cPanel, php, mysql, perl etch. In addition to these, you also get SSH access, subversion and the ability to host unlimited domains – I’ve never heard of getting all this on a shared hosting plan. Some people may say that you don’t really need SSH access if you have a cPanel. Well, the truth is if you want to move files around, edit them and create symlinks, it’s a lot faster if you have SSH access.

So now, I’m spending less money on hosting that I did with a VDS, I’m able to host all my sites just as I did before and I’m spending less time doing systems administration because I don’t have to worry about maintaining and updating software packages because the web host does it for me.

If you plan on signing up for an account, please consider using my referral link.