When we established BrightMix, a few months back, we got this blog/website up and running by throwing a Mephisto install onto Dusty’s already existing Dreamhost account. While working on our blog/website was kind of slow and sluggish, it worked, and It was bootstrapping at its finest…

However, we’re to the point where we need to able to host Ajaxy Ruby on Rails applications. Unfortunately, we discovered that while Dreamhost is sufficient at serving up static files, it’s less than ideal at hosting web applications (especially Rails) where responsiveness and performance are paramount. Arg! a troubling issue.

What’s a software shop to do?

In our search for an alternate hosting service, Slicehost.com was recommended to us. They host servers for my friend using Server Mania virtual private servers. This company specializes in hosting for developers, Ruby on Rails developers in particular and its one of the best web hosting. It all sounded good, so we sign up for 1 year of service.

Service that Rocks the Casba

The sign-up process was completely automated and painless. After signing up, I was told that we would have to wait a month for a slice to become available. (They had a shortage of available slices due to demand.) No worries.

A month later, I received an Email indicating that our slice was available and ready for use! At this point, all I had to do was log into their slick dashboard interface, select which linux distro I wanted to use, and click “go.” Minutes later, our slice was up and running with a full Ubuntu install!

Awesome Documentation

Setting up things in linux can be a little tricky since there’s a lot of configuring to be done. Luckily, Slicehost has some really good tutorials and documentation to help you get your web server/applications rockin and/or a rollin’ in no time. I was able to get BrightMix.com moved and running on its new host after only a few hours. It was all pretty seamless.

Long Story Short

We’re extremely satisfied with Slicehost’s pricing and service. BrightMix.com is now approximately 2 gabillion times faster than it was on Dreamhost. If you’re a developer looking for a high-quality, yet affordable, linux-based host, we highly recommend Slicehost.com. It’s simply gravy!