
Chart of Y Combinator companies' hosting decisions, 2011 edition - jf
http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011
======
latch
Mind blown that:

-Some ~40% (stupid pie chart) don't have an SSL cert, but almost all have login/registration page (4 out of 4 that I randomly picked had a login/registration page)

-So many people use GoDaddy as a registrar (they were horrible before SOPA)

-That startups use AWS despite its poor cost/performance

~~~
xxqs
what's horrible about GoDaddy? I used them for domain registration and DNS
hosting, and everything went smoothly. The only annoying part, is how they try
to sell additional goodies along the domain registration.

the front page ladies weren't too much of disturbance either :)

~~~
jf
This topic comes up every time I run this report.

The reasons why people don't like GoDaddy are covered in both of the previous
discussions on this report. Well worth reading!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2080469>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746386>

~~~
keen
The older reports are broken, for me at least. They show the same stats as
this year's report.

~~~
jf
Older reports are in the git commit history on the GitHub project for domain-
profiler.

~~~
keen
Thanks.

------
reinhardt
Interesting stats; any chance to get data about the rest of the stack (web
server, db, framework, etc)?

~~~
jf
I'm always looking for clever ways to determine that information :)

Have you seen underthesite.com?

~~~
p0ppe
And <http://trends.builtwith.com/>

------
mikelbring
I would be really interested to see what programming stack what all the Y
Combinator companies use.

~~~
nchuhoai
I second that. There are so many possible combinations these days

~~~
swah
<http://stackparts.com/>

------
pospischil
Is the data collection methodology described somewhere? I'm questioning the
accuracy given an error on our data (GoDaddy is not our registrar, namecheap
is).

It's also a bit suspect that namecheap is not listed as anyone's registrar
after so many fled GoDaddy for namecheap a few weeks back.

~~~
pospischil
OK -- the data is definitely out of date for at least one company (ours,
custora). I wonder how common this is? Perhaps the cache was not cleared
before generating the output?

I forked the repo, ran it on custora.com, and eNom was (correctly) listed as
the registrar.

I'm re-running the full ycombinator list now, and will update when finished.

~~~
pospischil
The results are in, and there isn't a very dramatic difference.

Looks like 8 companies have switched away from GoDaddy since the data was
collected.

I've issued a pull request to jf for the updated stats.

~~~
jf
Merged, thanks!

------
anarchitect
Are PaaS providers like Heroku appearing as "Amazon" in the web host column?
Would be interesting to see this broken down further if that's the case.

~~~
jf
Agreed. I'm working on updating domain-profiler to better detect PaaS
providers like Heroku, GAE, and Azure.

In the meantime, you can see who's using Heroku by looking for domains that
have an SSL certificate with a certificate type of "*.heroku.com"

~~~
bgentry
That's only if they are using the free wildcard ssl addon. If they have their
own cert and domain name (most do) then they won't show up like that.

~~~
jf
Oh, good point. I don't know how I missed that. Thanks!

------
whyleyc
Do you have the 2009 or 2010 editions available anywhere ?

Would be good to compare to see trends.

~~~
jf
[https://github.com/jpf/domain-
profiler/commits/master/ycombi...](https://github.com/jpf/domain-
profiler/commits/master/ycombinator.html)

------
ispivey
To everyone amazed by the various suboptimal decisions that startups make,
think of it this way: the easiest, most straightforward solution is always the
best one until it's more costly than some alternative.

I'd rather have my team working on product than researching domain registrars
or hosts, since the odds of your registrar having a meaningful impact on your
company's success are very low. Thus "just grab a big box on Rackspace" or
"Namecheap is fine, just get it done".

~~~
jf
I'm glad you mention this because that was the basically the motivation for me
to build this tool in the first place. I was selecting a DNS host for the
startup I was at and was wondering: "what DNS host do all my friends use?". I
found myself doing a lot of dig commands, so I wrote what became domain-
profiler.

I don't think you should spend a lot of time selecting hosting, but I do think
you should put in a little bit of research into what you pick. It really sucks
when your website is unavailable for an hour due to issues with your DNS
provider - especially when your TTL's are set to an hour.

~~~
ispivey
Yeah, absolutely. Making people better aware of best practices so they don't
have to think about it is a great mission!

------
rcaught
The profiler doesn't seem to take HTTP redirects into consideration,
incorrectly reporting the web host and SSL details for Vidyard, though I'm
sure for a few others too.

~~~
jf
You're correct, currently the "Web Host" is determined solely by what shows up
in the A records for the domain.

I've been working on updating the profile to determine the host based on where
the HTML is ultimately served from, along with some pretty substantial changes
in host detection heuristics. These are non-trivial changes. I was hoping to
have them done in time for this report, but tradition dictated that I produce
this report now.

------
kondro
I have a feeling that the Godaddy portions of those charts are getting much
lower by the minute.

~~~
jf
I generated a report specifically to show YC startups that were using GoDaddy:
[https://raw.github.com/jpf/domain-
profiler/master/ycombinato...](https://raw.github.com/jpf/domain-
profiler/master/ycombinator-companies-using-godaddy)

The exodus away from GoDaddy stopped as soon as they reversed their support of
SOPA.

------
mattmaroon
FWIW, draftmix.com was a product of Blue Frog Gaming, Inc. We are a YC funded
company. We don't run draftmix anymore, but we are still very much alive. Our
main products do still use Softlayer, but we've got some stuff on Amazon too.

------
krambs
I really thought more would be using CloudFlare.

------
OoTheNigerian
can we see the very latest for registrars? So we know if the Godaddy migrate
cry really worked.

~~~
Feanim
That's already the very latest. "Generated by Joel on 2012-01-17 using his
domain-profiler software"

------
RMacy
Very interesting -- Im surprised of the large use of GoDaddy SSL and Domain
products.

------
spez
reddit uses AWS

------
DrorY
how about microsoft's azure? Any stats on that?

~~~
jf
sadtrombone.com

------
nirvana
(We're not YC funded, but we did get into Startup Chile. Just wanted to share
some options for people.)

Here's the choices our startup has made:

EMAIL: After much investigation, we decided to host our email in Iceland. This
is due to the strong privacy laws in Iceland, and wanting a hosted solution
outside the USA (and which had technical support, unlike google)

We chose: <http://1984hosting.com/> Pretty happy with them, though
occasionally their site will give us a response in icelandic when trying to
admin stuff, keeps things exciting! (they're helpful though and do support via
email in english.)

HOSTING: We're planning to go fully dedicated with Hetzner:
[http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-
pr...](http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-
produktmatrix-special)

Since our product will require a fair number of nodes and significant
processing, the price and performance advantage of Hetzner vs. something like
Amazon is very dramatic. (I haven't used Hetzner yet, but from my
investigations they get positive remarks)

DOMAINS: For years all of our domains have been handled thru Moniker. If
you're going to go with a US registrar, don't use Go Daddy or any other
consumer registrar. Moniker is set up for domain portfolios and they have very
strong security policies and no BS.

I'd prefer to have this part of our business be offshore, however, given the
propensity in recent years for US judges to rule domains be handed over
without just cause. However, I've not found a good international Registrar.

~~~
jesseendahl
Gandi.net is a great international registrar. They are based in Paris, France,
and took a public stance against SOPA. They are also the EFF's registrar and
have a great web interface. Their slogan is "no bullshit™"

I have no affiliation with them, aside from being a very satisfied customer.

~~~
kmfrk
They don't seem to have any two-factor authentication, which is a big deal-
breaker to me - compared to Name.com. They don't reply to inquiries about it
on Twitter, too.

