8 Virtual-Private and Dedicated Hosting Providers
Dedicated server, virtual-private server, and cloud hosting have seen very rapid evolution over the last 18 months or so. The industry is maturing rapidly and hosting providers are jockeying for top positions in this promising market.
If you are a serious LAMP application developer you have or you will soon run into the need to set up, configure and tune the entire ’stack’. Without going into issues of scalability, here are 8 providers that I have researched. I have only used a few of them myself, so I cannot compare their quality. However the table below might help you start your own research.
I have reduced the ’specs’ to only 2: RAM, and outbound data transfer allowed per month. I list the prices for 3 configurations of these 2 specs:
- a “developer’s box” with 1 GB RAM, and only 100GB outbound data per month
- a “dumb-but-busy web server” with 256 MB and 1GB outbound data
- a “workhorse server” with 1GB RAM and 1GB outbound data.
One thing worth noting is that for many web applications, outbound bandwidth is a lot more expensive than CPU and RAM.
Do the math: you can easily imagine that a server with a decent CPU, 1GB RAM can generate 1 MB of dynamic content per second (let’s assume 24/7 for simplicity). That will cost you roughly $100/mo with the below providers.
In this 24/7 1MB/sec scenario, the total bandwidth usage over a month will be 2.5 TB (1 MB * 3600 * 24 * 30). Nowadays most providers give you 1 TB for free, and so you will have to purchase the additional 1.5 TB at the rate of $0.15 to $0.50 per extra GB. Do the math…
At minimum this will cost you an eye-popping $225 on top of your $100 or so! It’s just like with cellphones. They are very cheap considering what they can do, but actually using them can become very expensive.
If you are seriously considering scaling out an application on one of these hosting providers, you will need to choose whether to use software or hardware load balancers. The software type is easy to come by: rent an extra box, deploy your favorite load balancing software solution on it. However true performance is delivered by hardware load balancers; there is a LOT of variability in the availability, quality and pricing of hardware load balancers at the various hosting providers.. so analyze your problem and design your architecture carefully before committing to one provider.
| Provider, Product & url | setup fee | 1GB 100GB/mo |
256MB 1TB/mo |
1GB 1TB/mo |
HW Load Balancer |
| GoGrid owned by ServePath Pre-Paid Cloud Hosting |
free | $150 | $84 | $300 | free |
| Joyent Accelerator |
1 mo’s fee | $125 | $45 | $125 | $100 per server |
| LayeredTech
GridLayer Virtual Machine |
$19 | $84 | $49 | $84 | not sure |
| Media Temple
Dedicated Virtual (dv) |
free | $150 | $50 | $150 | no |
| Mosso
owned by Rackspace Cloud Server |
free | $68 | $231 | $264 | no |
| Slicehost
owned by Rackspace Slice |
free | $70 | $190 | $190 | no |
| Tecktonic | free | $48 | $53 | $53 | no |
| The Planet
Dedicated Server |
$25 | $60 | n/a | $150 | $75 / 4 servers |
[1] Joyent Accelerators come with Open Solaris and 10TB/mo bandwidth
[2] The Planet dedicated servers come with 1.5+ TB/mo. Also see the Bargain Bin for older, discounted server models.
Disclaimer: I compiled this information in April 2009 and I believe it to be accurate; however I make no representation whatsoever on behalf of, or about the services and products of any of the companies listed here. Please check directly with them for their latest specifications and pricing.
