They have supported it for a few weeks now, I believe… but Rails runs so slow on there, even with FCGI, that about 50% of the page hits take like 15 seconds. After testing it over and over, under varying circumstances, for about a half hour, we moved our client over to Dreamhost and it’s running much better.
In my experience, TextDrive is by far the best option if you can get your head around LightTPD configuration… Dreamhost and A Small Orange are great Apache/FCGI fallbacks.
those are pretty cheap prices. the amount of bandwidth and storage they give you is impressive for $15. Obviously they oversell their servers, but still.
Alot of the registrars use this company called utopia or something like that for their hosting services. register.com does this and so does netsol.
Matt
21 Apr 06
Yeah, I’ve avoided GoDaddy. They’ve been offering Rails for a while, but most of the people I’ve talked to haven’t had a good experience.
Site5 is as cheap or cheaper, and they seem to really be on the ball.
AW
21 Apr 06
Congrats guys! This is huge. Hopefully they’ll fix the technical issues on their end.
Jason, maybe we can rephrase your last sentence to “All aboard”. :)
Another Mark
21 Apr 06
It looks like Media Temple will soon be bundling Rails into their (low-end) Shared-Server hosting plans…
The problem with Godaddy is that their hosting pretty much sucks hard.
I wouldn’t recommend using them for anything except domain registration.
Ed
21 Apr 06
Speaking of domains, what are the good places for shared ROR hosting, then? I’d like to start with shared on my site and move up to dedicated if I get more people and I make some profit…
So far:
GoDaddy - ok, slow on Rails
Dreamhost - I heard they hound you over “CPU usage”
Site5 - Good plans, what else?
Textdrive - Pricey, though excellent
Site5 is extremely fast to respond to support requests, are always bettering their hardware/software apps and have a great forums community. I’ve been with them for about a year and am extremely pleased with the service.
JonF
21 Apr 06
I’ve got a few sites which are — at least for now — being hosting on Site5. The speed seems fine.
They don’t have the greatest documentation on how a Rails app should be hosted on their servers. I cobbled together a process from posts in their forums (briefly: set up your app in your home directory, create a symlink to your app in public_html, set RAILS ROOT (in environment.rb) to point to the location of your app in the home directory, don’t forget ps -x and kill -9 to recycle fastcgi processes).
I have been trying to host rails apps on site5 FOREVER and have had little success… their FastCGI config must be setup incorrectly because i’m experiencing the same problems that Raymond mentioned he was having with Godaddy. For clients I want to host ruby on rails apps for, I have resorted to Dreamhost because my apps run with very little failure and only are down when the server is down (which happens a little more than I’d like). No solution out there is perfect.. TextDrive is too expensive for what they offer, Dreamhost is sometimes unreliable and slow at responding to support requests (but will eventually), site5 has slow response times because of their configuration and I guess Godaddy is sucking too.. so my suggestion is going with Dreamhost if you want the least amount of headache. Maybe one of these days TextDrive will come out with some overselling plans and then we can all breath have a nice host. :)
Brian D
21 Apr 06
Anyone have experience with BlueHost RoR hosting speed and reliability?
Does anyone know of a quality, low cost, Canadian based RoR host? Certain clients have an aversion to the PATRIOT act that comes along with US based hosts.
Not to post a blatant plug, but here it is. At thoughtbot we host both shared and dedicated rails starting at $35/month. We know what we’re doing, and we are small so you get individual attention. We’ve moved people off both site5 and textdrive when they weren’t cutting it.
doug
22 Apr 06
I’ve been using Dreamhost for a few years, and was delighted that they started offering Rails support just as I learned the framework. Ed says that they “hound you over CPU usage”, but I’m hosting 8 medium traffic sites on their basic plan (unlimited domain names!) and haven’t gone over any limits yet.
Duff OMelia
22 Apr 06
> Ed said
> Speaking of domains, what are the good places for
> shared ROR hosting, then?
>So far:
>GoDaddy - ok, slow on Rails
>Dreamhost - I heard they hound you over �CPU usage�
>Site5 - Good plans, what else?
>Textdrive - Pricey, though excellent
I have had a terrible time with TextDrive. The shared hosting box I’m on needs to be rebooted *very* frequently. It’s quite unreliable. I recently purchased multiple accounts from “http://ocssolutions.com”:http://ocssolutions.com. They have been outstanding so far. Their customer service is incredible. I highly recommend them.
It’s good to see it proliferating more and more now, Rails is something I’d really like to get some experience in but the (possibly?) perceived lack of hosting options has always been the decider for me.
We’ve been using Text Drive but are not overly impressed with integrity of the service. Are looking into Site5 now also; very impressive back-end but will see how it pans out.
It is surprisingly difficult to find a good, quality, reputable Rails host so far.
Being the “recommended” Ruby on Rails web host must bring a lot of businesses to Text Drive but are they actually as good as they are perceived to be?
Jack
25 Jul 06
www.a2hosting.com - Ruby on Rails and Mongrel (FastCGI replacement by Zed Shaw) - best combo i’ve found.
The Wog
26 Aug 06
Wow, no mention of PlanetArgon!
I know this post is old, but, even at this entry date, PlanetArgon has been succesfully hosting apps for many clients, including me.
25 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Raymond Brigleb 21 Apr 06
They have supported it for a few weeks now, I believe… but Rails runs so slow on there, even with FCGI, that about 50% of the page hits take like 15 seconds. After testing it over and over, under varying circumstances, for about a half hour, we moved our client over to Dreamhost and it’s running much better.
In my experience, TextDrive is by far the best option if you can get your head around LightTPD configuration… Dreamhost and A Small Orange are great Apache/FCGI fallbacks.
Brian Breslin 21 Apr 06
those are pretty cheap prices. the amount of bandwidth and storage they give you is impressive for $15. Obviously they oversell their servers, but still.
Alot of the registrars use this company called utopia or something like that for their hosting services. register.com does this and so does netsol.
Matt 21 Apr 06
Yeah, I’ve avoided GoDaddy. They’ve been offering Rails for a while, but most of the people I’ve talked to haven’t had a good experience.
Site5 is as cheap or cheaper, and they seem to really be on the ball.
AW 21 Apr 06
Congrats guys! This is huge. Hopefully they’ll fix the technical issues on their end.
Jason, maybe we can rephrase your last sentence to “All aboard”. :)
Another Mark 21 Apr 06
It looks like Media Temple will soon be bundling Rails into their (low-end) Shared-Server hosting plans…
http://www.mediatemple.net/services/webhosting/ss/linux-standard/ss6_sneak_peek/index.php
Jon 21 Apr 06
The problem with Godaddy is that their hosting pretty much sucks hard.
I wouldn’t recommend using them for anything except domain registration.
Ed 21 Apr 06
Speaking of domains, what are the good places for shared ROR hosting, then? I’d like to start with shared on my site and move up to dedicated if I get more people and I make some profit…
So far:
GoDaddy - ok, slow on Rails
Dreamhost - I heard they hound you over “CPU usage”
Site5 - Good plans, what else?
Textdrive - Pricey, though excellent
thoughts?
Geof Harries 21 Apr 06
Site5 is extremely fast to respond to support requests, are always bettering their hardware/software apps and have a great forums community. I’ve been with them for about a year and am extremely pleased with the service.
JonF 21 Apr 06
I’ve got a few sites which are — at least for now — being hosting on Site5. The speed seems fine.
They don’t have the greatest documentation on how a Rails app should be hosted on their servers. I cobbled together a process from posts in their forums (briefly: set up your app in your home directory, create a symlink to your app in public_html, set RAILS ROOT (in environment.rb) to point to the location of your app in the home directory, don’t forget ps -x and kill -9 to recycle fastcgi processes).
Lance C 21 Apr 06
I have been trying to host rails apps on site5 FOREVER and have had little success… their FastCGI config must be setup incorrectly because i’m experiencing the same problems that Raymond mentioned he was having with Godaddy. For clients I want to host ruby on rails apps for, I have resorted to Dreamhost because my apps run with very little failure and only are down when the server is down (which happens a little more than I’d like). No solution out there is perfect.. TextDrive is too expensive for what they offer, Dreamhost is sometimes unreliable and slow at responding to support requests (but will eventually), site5 has slow response times because of their configuration and I guess Godaddy is sucking too.. so my suggestion is going with Dreamhost if you want the least amount of headache. Maybe one of these days TextDrive will come out with some overselling plans and then we can all breath have a nice host. :)
Brian D 21 Apr 06
Anyone have experience with BlueHost RoR hosting speed and reliability?
Dave P 21 Apr 06
This thread’s probably dead by now but:
Does anyone know of a quality, low cost, Canadian based RoR host? Certain clients have an aversion to the PATRIOT act that comes along with US based hosts.
Any ideas?
George Morris 21 Apr 06
Now, if only GoDaddy would adopt the whole simplicity movement championed by 37Signals.
Chad Pytel 21 Apr 06
Not to post a blatant plug, but here it is. At thoughtbot we host both shared and dedicated rails starting at $35/month. We know what we’re doing, and we are small so you get individual attention. We’ve moved people off both site5 and textdrive when they weren’t cutting it.
doug 22 Apr 06
I’ve been using Dreamhost for a few years, and was delighted that they started offering Rails support just as I learned the framework. Ed says that they “hound you over CPU usage”, but I’m hosting 8 medium traffic sites on their basic plan (unlimited domain names!) and haven’t gone over any limits yet.
Duff OMelia 22 Apr 06
> Ed said
> Speaking of domains, what are the good places for
> shared ROR hosting, then?
>So far:
>GoDaddy - ok, slow on Rails
>Dreamhost - I heard they hound you over �CPU usage�
>Site5 - Good plans, what else?
>Textdrive - Pricey, though excellent
I have had a terrible time with TextDrive. The shared hosting box I’m on needs to be rebooted *very* frequently. It’s quite unreliable. I recently purchased multiple accounts from “http://ocssolutions.com”:http://ocssolutions.com. They have been outstanding so far. Their customer service is incredible. I highly recommend them.
Daniel, Rogue Connect 23 Apr 06
It’s good to see it proliferating more and more now, Rails is something I’d really like to get some experience in but the (possibly?) perceived lack of hosting options has always been the decider for me.
Mark 12 Jun 06
www.cenixhost.com is great hosting
Galen 23 Jul 06
We’ve been using Text Drive but are not overly impressed with integrity of the service. Are looking into Site5 now also; very impressive back-end but will see how it pans out.
It is surprisingly difficult to find a good, quality, reputable Rails host so far.
Being the “recommended” Ruby on Rails web host must bring a lot of businesses to Text Drive but are they actually as good as they are perceived to be?
Jack 25 Jul 06
www.a2hosting.com - Ruby on Rails and Mongrel (FastCGI replacement by Zed Shaw) - best combo i’ve found.
The Wog 26 Aug 06
Wow, no mention of PlanetArgon!
I know this post is old, but, even at this entry date, PlanetArgon has been succesfully hosting apps for many clients, including me.
Give them a look.