

Chart of YC companies' hosting decisions - jf
http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html

======
charliepark
It's surprising how many cells of that table say "GoDaddy."

~~~
sant0sk1
s/surprising/depressing/

GoDaddy's "used car lot" salesmanship makes me loathe the company. I'm in
process of transferring all my domains elsewhere.

~~~
potatolicious
Likewise. Have a fairly budget-price but not-so-shady registrar in mind?

[edit] WTF guys, why am I being modded up? I asked a question without
providing additional insight - this doesn't deserve +points.

~~~
jseifer
I got tired of GoDaddy a while ago and moved all of my domains to NameCheap.
They've been great, although private registrations cost a couple dollars after
the first year.

Edit: <http://www.namecheap.com>

~~~
Sam_Odio
I second namecheap. I've used them for several years and have around 30
domains registered there (including Divvyshot). It's worth paying a little
more for a more intuitive interface. I've never felt afraid of being tricked
into buying something I didn't want.

Another suggestion: Use everydns.net for DNS. It's donation-based
(<http://www.everydns.com/donate.php>), powerful, reliable, and run by David
Ulevitch of opendns.com.

~~~
blasdel
I will never ever trust _anything_ even remotely associated with OpenDNS or
it's progenitors.

They're not Open in any way, and their service is not DNS either. They're just
an 'underdog' Verisign -- same bullshit, different self-image.

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donw
I'm surprised that Linode isn't on there at all, although it's good to see
BitPusher get mentioned for their work on Wufoo (good bunch of guys over
there).

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ivankirigin
Email should include outgoing. Tipjoy uses <http://authsmtp.com>

Google hosted email for outbound kinda stinks

~~~
akamaka
I'm just about to switch to Google for mail hosting, and your comment worries
me a little.

What kind of trouble have people had with Google's outgoing mail servers?

~~~
rufo
I think they might just be talking about using it for mass-outbound messages
from an app, not for actual human-to human messages. (Never had a problem with
Gmail for my personal/work e-mail, anyway.)

~~~
ivankirigin
You're right. We still use it for inbound, and human based outbound. We do
things like send monthly reminders to pay for Tipjoy, meaning lots of emails
sent regularly.

~~~
sharjeel
Is it possible to have multiple email providers on a single domain? How do you
do that?

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jhancock
HN has had several slicehost vs. linode threads. Comments seems they were an
even match (different but even). So why are there no linode users in this
list?

I'm asking as a new startup eyeing both as potential host.

~~~
worldhello
also, bumptechnologies.com is using linode as DNS. Doesn't linode only offer
DNS to domains hosted there?

~~~
jmintz
Correct, both our website and our matching infrastructure is hosted at Linode.

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codyrobbins
This is pretty much the exact breakdown of information I have had in the back
of my mind to find for quite a while. It's very helpful — perhaps the most
useful thing I've seen posted on HN since I started reading. (At least, most
useful for me!) Of course, I wouldn't want to jump off a bridge just because
everyone else was doing it, but researching all the available providers for
all these hosting requirements is a potentially endless job. It's nice to see
the decisions other companies have made, to crowdsource it a bit and narrow
down the options.

~~~
jf
Thanks Cody! I wrote the code that generated that report for the same reason:
I wanted to be able to research what decisions other domain owners have made.
I'm happy to hear that you found this information useful too!

Did you see the code I put on GitHub? <http://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler>

~~~
tybris
Great work. I immediately stored it to help my future hosting decisions. Small
feature suggestions: include percentages in the pie charts to make them more
readable. (Especially for colour blind)

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run4yourlives
Could somebody please explain why you would use a DNS provider that is not
your web host?

I've always just used the host's DNS servers for my domains, but I'm curious
as to the decision making of others... are there real concerns that would lead
you to separate these services?

~~~
zach
Many places you lease a server from do not typically provide DNS servers.
Also, you get the advantage of always-speedy, geographically diverse name
lookup.

When I leased my own server, I had a painful experiment with hosting my own
DNS on the same box. After I gave up on that, I admit I snooped on the
provider YC used and have never had a problem.

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pg
Interesting, but in the first two there are slices labeled both "other/self
hosted" and "self hosted."

~~~
jf
"self hosted" means that the IP or Whois lookup matched the second level
domain - a high degree of confidence that the service is self hosted.

"other/self hosted" is basically a catch all. Originally just labeled "other",
I added "self hosted" later since that is often (but not always) the case.

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Keyframe
does anyone have experience with <http://www.fdcservers.net/> ? I was looking
around for unmetered 100MBps and what I am looking at looks really good and
cheap. I have a dedicated server at local ISP and one at theplanet.com - I am
not really satisfied with theplanet.com one and prices for local ISP (though
superb ping, of course) are a riot.

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gcheong
Wow, nothing on Google App Engine or Azure?

~~~
tybris
Well, Google App Engine isn't exactly suitable for innovative applications
since you're locked to what their environment offers you (e.g. no background
processes!?). Azure I don't know, is that generally available yet?

~~~
stevejalim
App Engine does offer you cron jobs now, at least.

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manpreets7
I wonder why Google App Engine doesn't show up even once. I thought it was a
pretty viable and flexible option.

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zhyder
Cool! Looks like most folks using GoDaddy as registrar switch to some other
service (typically web host?) for the DNS. How come?

Are any of the companies with Softlayer using their Cloudlayer offering? If
yes, how do you find it?

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steamboiler
Does choice of hosting provider figure in selection of startups? Will one
startup get preference over another otherwise equal startup if the former is
(not) using a particular hosting provider/mail/registrar?

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galactus
Pie charts considered harmful:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Discussion_on_use>

~~~
jf
The code is on github. Send me a patch ;-)

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jganetsk
It's not surprising how many cells say Google.

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dmillar
I'm curious. Does hosting with Amazon imply EC2? Or S3 static files? Or some
other form of hosting I am unaware of?

~~~
jf
It (in almost every case) implies hosting on EC2. I haven't added detection of
image host to my script yet.

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utku_karatas2
Nice! I'd also be interested in the techology decisions (languages,
frameworks..).

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aq
Umm, what about multiple CN SSL certificates?

~~~
jf
I didn't think to check for those. Great idea, thanks!

~~~
juliusdavies
I think multi-CN is pretty rare. It's Subject Alt Names to look out for!

<https://owa.central1.com/> for example.

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gregking
I noticed a bunch of people are using enom for email. I assume this is because
of their hosted exchange. Does anyone have any experience with enom's standard
hosted exchange and using it using mobile devices such as BB/iphone

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borism
oh noes, you made a pie chart - the most useless chart type of all!

~~~
jf
<http://laughingsquid.com/accurate-pie-chart/>

~~~
borism
thank you! morons who down-voted my comment don't seem to be able to
understand...

~~~
rms
Making it as a joke didn't work on this forum because people generally
downvote short jokes they don't get. The rule about humor here that seems to
work here is to make sure it's actually funny.

