
Ask HN: Ruby on Rails Hosting - matt1
I've decided to take the plunge and learn RoR (go me!). I currently have hosting at GoDaddy, which I've read has poor RoR support.<p>I'm not looking to spend more than say, $15/mo -- just want a place to build some small demo apps. Any suggestions?
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pius
If you're comfortable administering a Linux slice, consider Slicehost
($20/month). If you're just learning, Heroku might be a great option.

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shawndrost
If you go with Slicehost and are iffy with your sysadmin skills, take a look
at deprec/capistrano, tools that let someone smarter than you handle your
sysadmin stuff (at the cost of keeping you ignorant).

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gunderson
This is a good point. You might want to use passenger if you lack sysadmin
skills. The big pain of Rails is keeping your thin/mongrel/etc processes
running, etc. I imagine a slicehost $20/month slice would run passenger
mod_rails just fine and would be fine for your hobby project or something
small.

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sant0sk1
Heroku FTW. (<http://heroku.com/>)

Especially since you'd be supporting a YC startup and they are great for
beginners because of their pretty powerful in-browser editor. You don't even
need your own dev environnment if you don't want.

Also the service is free during beta. Not sure if the beta is still closed,
but ping me if it is as I'm sure I have some invites available.

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ichverstehe
But don't miss out on some kind of 'real' development environment. The usual
kind of stuff. Basically it goes down to:

1\. Learn to use a _real_ editor. I don't care which. As long as it is either
vim or emacs. And maybe TextMate.

2\. Get to know your way around the command line. Really.

3\. Use a VCS, may I propose: Git

Sure, Heroku got a nice in-browser editor, but that is not the main point,
honestly, TextEdit provides more or less the same functionality.

The main point is easy as f*ck deployment. If you are using Git, a simple `git
push` will be enough to deploy, run migrations and restart server.
([http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2008/3/3/api_and_external_gi...](http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2008/3/3/api_and_external_git_access/))

Damn it, when is somebody creating a clone of that functionality? It is so
pretty. git push, git push, git push.

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pius
Hmm, didn't realize they allowed you to use local development tools. Question
for people who are using Heroku: Is it fair to call it a tool for beginning
Rails developers or does it have benefits for "advanced" Rails devs? This blog
post is definitely making me take a second look at the service.

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ichverstehe
It's dirt nice and easy for putting online smallish stuff. And word is that
support for Sinatra is soon to come. Now, that is kick ass.

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pius
Ah, cool. Hopefully they're adding support for all Rack-based apps and not
just Sinatra. That'd be sweet.

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hopeless
I may get flamed for saying so but Dreamhost support RoR apps, lots of
bandwidth/disk space and all for $11/month. It's shared hosting but they
support mod_rails / Phusion Passenger which is working out great for me so far
(I'm running a Redmine bug tracker on Dreamhost, along with lots of other PHP
stuff).

However, I've also got a virtual server from Slicehost where I deploy my own
apps... it's noticeably faster than Dreamhost but you do have to deal with
lots of sysadmin stuff which distracts you from the RoR learning/development.

My advice would be to start with a shared RoR host (a la Dreamhost) and then
migrate to a virtual server host (e.g. Slicehost) once you've got something
that's too running slow, getting too popular or is starting to earn revenue.

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vaksel
they are pretty anal about bandwidth though, I had a file hosted and it hit
some popular forums, and they shut my account down after like 50 GB of
bandwidth was used up

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alaskamiller
Linode.com is a better choice than Slicehost. Better customer service and more
bang for the buck. But you do have to learn a bit about sysadmin.

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natrius
Linode deleted my VM when my credit card expired and didn't respond to my
emails about it. I didn't have any important data on it and they're cheap, so
I still use them for trivial things, but I wouldn't base an actual business on
them.

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hardbap
I've been happy with hostingrails.com. The support has been very good and
accounts start at less than $4 USD per month.

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zasz
Seconded about the support, but you must pay a year in advance. Their 30 day
back guarantee is very nice, though.

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gunderson
I like Slicehost. I have tried Joyent and it's good but you have to learn a
bunch of Solaris skills and many gems don't work quite right on Solaris, and
I've tried Engineyard but nobody will return my emails to set up an account.

Slicehost has never done anything but offer consistent, professional service.
I could not recommend them more highly.

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jshen
the benefit of engineyard is that you don't have to administer the server.
Engineyard is not cheap though.

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gunderson
I know the benefits, they just don't seem to be accepting new business now or
over the past few months.

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scottymac
Hmm, that's odd. We got three slices in early May and it took them 4 days to
get us up and running. I have nothing but fantastic things to say about
EngineYard. Worth every penny.

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gunderson
Everyone says the service is great, but I have filled out the web form twice
and no response.

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jshen
my experience with them hasn't been great. They caused our site downtime on
numerous occasions due to oversights on their part.

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gtani
here are some credible reviews (i think)

[http://earthcode.com/blog/2008/02/cheap_rails_vps_options.ht...](http://earthcode.com/blog/2008/02/cheap_rails_vps_options.html)

[http://groups.google.com/group/rails-
business/browse_thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/rails-
business/browse_thread/thread/d8badc3f6120fec7?hl=en)

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matthall28
A VPS provider(i recommend SuperBytes.net) is probably the cheapest route. You
would just have to install RoR yourself.

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vivekamn
We have had good experience with speedyrails(www.speedyrails.com). They are
cheap and their service is great.

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scottymac
SpeedyRails shared hosting's 60MB per mongrel isn't a whole lot of headroom.

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lyime
Moprh

