Some thoughts about some of the best cloud hosting providers in 2018 and Hatchbox a Ruby on Rails deployment service you must try if you are a Ruby on Rails developer.
Heroku
Heroku is one of the best, reliable, scalable and well known cloud hosting service on the web.
His purpose is to make developers and users life easier. You don’t have to worry about the security of the server, they manage to resolve all security issues. In other words you don’t need a DevOps to manage your server.
PROS:
✅ System maintenance: they update the distribution operating system e.g. Linux and all the related applications for running the system with the latest updates.
✅ Scale: Heroku scales in an instant, both vertically and horizontally. You can elegantly run everything from tiny hobby projects to enterprise-grade e-commerce handling Black Friday surges.
✅ Add-ons: It has lots of add-ons, some of them are free others with payment. E.g. databases, transactional emails, server and app metrics (memory, CPU load and errors)
✅ Price: this service starts from free plan (on the free plan the server go to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity and has 512mb RAM, but the speed is pretty good if you are using this on a side project or custom app that is used only by you.)
Heroku is strongly documented for multiple programming languages, it supports Javascript, Ruby, Java, PHP, Python, Scala and more.
Easy for you to make changes and version control, it supports GitHub integration and continuous delivery (it means that you make the change, you commit the change, than you push it to Heroku and it’s live).
CONS
❌ It becomes very expensive on larger applications with more users.
The second plan with a monthly pay of 7$/mo will never sleeps but if you want a database larger than 10k rows then you will need to upgrade your database plan to $9/mo. The professional plan cost is starting at 25$ per month and can scale to thousands of dollars when your user base grows.
👉 If you are interested in learning more about Heroku costs you can read my other article here: Why I choose Hatchbox.io over Heroku? And why you should use it too if you are a Ruby on Rails Developer.
I’m sure you heard of Unsplash, the best place for photographers to showcase their work. They spend $18K / monthly for server costs using Heroku and other services. You can read more about their hosting costs here: What does Unsplash Cost?
Their plan and approach is to pay more as your business grows.
❌ If you want to store images or data you have to use Amazon S3, Google or any other data cloud service.
❌ You don’t have access to the root of the server, but they the a custom build CLI with commands to control the server.
— Rackspace
Rackspace Cloud is a VPS cloud which means is a virtual private server and you will have access to Linux or Windows instances where you can install and run different platforms and servers like PHP, Wordpress, Ruby on Rails, e-commerce open source platforms, regular websites and any kind of web application.
Rackspace have multiple plans and you can choose between different computers with the cheapest monthly plan of 27$/mo (1GB RAM memory + 1 virtual core processor + 20GB SSD Space)
PROS:
✅ Very functional, reliable and high performance.
✅ Uptime 99.99%
✅ Scalable (it grows as the user base grows)
✅ Ability to build any web application you want beside a website.
CONS:
❌ It is more expensive than Digital Ocean or Vultr.
— Digital Ocean
Digital Ocean is a great service, fully reliable with 99.99% uptime. It has multiple distribution operating systems, they are calling them Droplets and all of them run under Linux.
While you will be able to deploy any kind of application built in Ruby, Python, Node JS, PHP or Java, you can also install other open sourced applications with one-click. Here are some of them: Discourse, Wodpress, Ghost…
With one click, you will have your new app ready to go on a super performance and scalable virtual private server.
If you are a Ruby on Rails developer I recommend you to check Hatchbox.io. If you want to save time and money deploying your apps. One thing I can say is Hatchbox.io will be your DevOps assistant.
PROS
✅ Very good price for the value and quality of the service.
✅ Super Fast & Reliable.
✅ 99.99% Server Uptime
CONS
❌ You have no DevOps Skills it will be a little difficult to manage your server.
Create your account on Digital Ocean using this link and you will get $10 in credit for any VPS.
Vultr
Similar to DigitalOcean, this is my second choice when choosing a VPS provider. Vultr is a great service, fully reliable with 99.99% uptime. It has multiple distribution operating systems but they support Windows as well.
You can choose from multiple locations when you create your server. By choosing the perfect location where your most traffic comes from will allow your visitors to a very fast loading speed.
Similar to Digital Ocean, you can also have One-Click install for applications.
PROS
✅ Very good price for the value and quality of the service.
✅ Super Fast & Reliable.
✅ 99.99% Server Uptime
CONS
❌ You have no DevOps Skills it will be a little difficult to manage your server.
— Hatchbox.io
While Hatchbox.io is still a new service that doesn’t have a big customer base or lots of money to spend on marketing and ads, I saw the value on it since the day it was released.
Deploying my Ruby on Rails applications on custom VPS servers was a pain until I discovered Hatchbox.io. I was spending so much time configuring the servers and handling all bugs was difficult.
When I first tried Hatchbox.io using the 5 days trial, I knew this service has an incredible value, because after all Time is Money. I was able to deploy my apps with Hatchbox and save time to work on other tasks.
One year ago, Hatchbox didn’t have all the features that are available now. Seeing the founder, Chris Oliver adding new features every month, made me to support it and share it with the world.
Please note: Hatchbox is not a hosting service, with Hatchbox you can manage your server and deploy your applications fast and secure and you can deploy to any virtual private server from any provider. Digital Ocean, Vultr, Amazon, Linode, Rackspace, Packet, Scaleway and many others.
Think of it as an DevOps assistant.
✅ Provision unlimited servers. With one account you can manage multiple servers.
✅ Deploy unlimited apps. With one account you can deploy unlimited apps. If you have one powerful server, you can deploy your apps on the same server.
✅ Flat, fixed pricing. Manage all your servers and apps with only $15/mo.
I appreciate you took the time to read everything and I want to thank you very much for that.
If are a Ruby on Rails developer and you would like to support Hatchbox.io and me please use my affiliate link here: https://hatchbox.io/?via=darkrubyist .
If you are not a Ruby on Rails developer, but you think this post has some value, please clap or share this post with the world.
Thank you!
