
What hosting provider are you using for your startup ? - sajid

======
kogir
Why not just co-locate a box of your own?

What I did:

Assemble random crap box from parts (Athlon 2100+, 512 MB RAM, 80GB HDD) This
was free for me, and should be cheap or free for you. It was also two years
ago, so you can probably find better hardware now.

Leave box at parents' house using cable modem for 2 months (free, but slow)

Co-locate box at Sprocket Data in Dallas for 6 months ($60/mo for 100 GB
traffic, 100 mbps burst)

Then things changed a lot, but my startup has always owned all the equipment.

I like being able to fix problems myself when needed.

~~~
sabat
"Why not just co-locate a box of your own?" "Co-locate box at Sprocket Data in
Dallas for 6 months ($60/mo for 100 GB traffic, 100 mbps burst)"

Because it's too expensive when you're just starting out. I could afford
$60/mo, for instance (because I'm older and have lots of kizzash) but I'm
hosted for $8/mo with 1.5TB of throughput.

If your site gets much traffic, you'll be over 60GB before you know it. :-o

~~~
spiralhead
problem with the $8/mo-type services is that you're limited as to what sort of
tech you can use

~~~
sabat
True, although some providers are more liberal than others. Dreamhost lets you
run your own stuff, like ruby, php, rails, etc. But yeah, it's a limited
environment, and you're sharing. When you're first starting out, you may not
care about that. But eventually ...

~~~
dpapathanasiou
The other big downside is that you can't just go in and kill an errant process
if your alpha version does something weird.

And you're also in the dark about what those _other_ processes (those not
owned by you) might be doing at any given time.

Controlling the entire server as root is just better.

~~~
jaggederest
well, to be honest, you get a shell account. I'm hosting stuff on dreamhost,
and it's entirely possible to killall my-errant-script when you need to. Just
realize that you're a pretty low-priveledge user.

It's a great deal for static file hosting though, if you're a data intensive
site as opposed to CPU-intensive site (or even a data-intensive site in
addition to cpu-intensive)

------
petercooper
I use SoftLayer <http://www.softlayer.com/> .. I used to use EV1 but since
they merged with The Planet they've not been as good. SoftLayer is made up of
many of the "old" The Planet guys and offer some amazing stuff like free
private LAN between your servers.

Of course you're going to start at no less than $150 per month, and I spend
almost $1000 a month, but.. this is business and you have to pay to get the
goods. People who run their businesses on naff shared hosting are crazy unless
they think the odd hour of downtime here or there is acceptable.

Of course, shared hosting or a VPS (my personal recommendation if your budget
is small) is a good way to start, but once you make revenue, it's time to
upgrade :)

~~~
scaz
SoftLayer is indeed very good. The virtual LAN is awesome - you can even setup
a PPTP VPN connection and access your virtual LAN from it.

VPN in your gateway box at home and it is almost like having the servers in
the other room. They don't charge you anything for data that goes over the
VPN, so you can upload/download from your server without using your bandwidth
quota - it is a great for pulling off site backups.

------
walesmd
You have some pretty strict requirements there - I am curious as to why. Is
your app really that complex where you require these services or are you
planning ahead for scaling issues?

Personally, I go with Dreamhost. The price is right, their service is awesome,
and customer support is willing to help you with whatever you need. If scaling
becomes an issue - then go looking for a dedicated host.

For 90% of the startups that launch, scaling will never become an issue.

~~~
sajid
It's not a scaling issue, I just prefer to be in control of the server.

~~~
sabat
Virtual hosting is always an option, then -- cheaper than having to pay for a
physical server (or its rental).

And eventually we'll have Amazon E2 ... eventually ... and with that, you can
control the (virtual) server _and_ deal with scaling issues.

------
arete
Try a Xen VPS, you get full control of your own OS image with no hardware to
worry about. Amazon EC2 is Xen-based but you can find much better prices. I
recommend serveraxis.com where you can get a VPS with 1GB of RAM and unlimited
bandwidth @ 10mbit/s for $130/m (or $45 for 200GB/m).

~~~
sajid
Another interesting option and cheap too, thanks.

------
sajid
I'm looking for a hosting provider who offers a full server package with root
access. The server should run Fedora or Red Hat Linux with at least 1Gb ram.

Any suggestions ?

The cheapest provider I can find offers the above for about $120 per month
(with unlimited bandwidth).

~~~
dpapathanasiou
We use Server Beach -- <http://serverbeach.com/> \-- and have had few
problems.

They have a wide range of options, with several servers under $100 per month,
but they limit bandwidth to 2,000 gb of transfer per month.

We find the 2,000 is a lot, though, (we've come close, but yet to go over),
and you can control it further by using AWS.

~~~
sajid
Thanks, that's great :-)

Theye're very good value for maoney and the bandwidth limits are reasonable
too.

------
npk
I just found <http://www.linode.com> and it looks like a winner. $20/month you
get a virtual server (so w/ root access.)

256mb ram, 8Gib disk, 100Gib/month $20

1gb ram, 32 gib disk, 400gib/month $80

------
dawie
I went with MediaTemple. They are cheap and seem to offer scaling
possibilities. Some people have warned me about them here on YC. I haven't
launched yet, so I can't really give you feeback on them

~~~
phuson
Just wondering...what's wrong with MediaTemple?

~~~
PStamatiou
I'm on a (dv) 3.0 rage and it's great. With plesk and root ssh I can do
anything, even install another OS. default is RHEL.

~~~
create_account
So you control the entire server as root, you get 1 TB of bandwidth, and it's
$50 a month?

Wow, that's the best combination so far... they do skimp on RAM and HD size,
compared to some of the others.

Is it too good to be true? What disadvantages or problems have other people
seen?

------
sbraford
LayeredTech.com. You get a big bang for your buck.

Service? It's ok.

Totally unmanaged, so don't expect much on that front.

------
gustaf
Primarily Serverbeach. Have one server with Layered Tech and one with Linode
for internal

------
juwo
Glorb. Great Value, Great Service

<http://glorb.com>

------
mattculbreth
Future Hosting at <http://futurehosting.biz>

~~~
scaz
I have to advise against these guys. Hate to do it, because the support is
good, they seem like nice guys, and they are reselling SoftLayer servers, so
the network is amazing.

But I've had VPS's on three different physical servers with them and they were
all starved for disk IO. They take quad core servers with 16-32GB of RAM but
only put two 7200 RPM IDE drives in them. A 7200 RPM IDE drive is good for
about 120 I/Os per second, so if the server has 20 users you get a whopping 6
I/Os per second.

Check it out:

$ time ls -l /etc /dev/null

real 0m12.530s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.046s

12.5 seconds to list a directory with ~150 files. This is from a VPS account I
have with them with nothing running on it.

To be fair, most VPS hosting probably sucks just as bad.

~~~
mattculbreth
Hmm, never noticed poor disk performance. I'm not doing much with the server
besides web and SVN right now, but it's something to keep in mind. Thanks.

Good guys though.

------
robertgaal
Are you looking for a Rails host or...?

~~~
sajid
Do TextDrive do Lamp ?

~~~
SwellJoe
Yes. They do it better than most.

