Community Matters

Over the past couple of months this blog has moved twice. I think it was fairly seamless and I also think that the difference in responsiveness of the blog is fairly dramatic.

The first move was from my server at home to a VPS hosted with Datarealm. The rationale was that I finally wanted the webserver in a real data center – the data volume was reaching a point where it became noticeable for me when competing for bandwidth with it.

And then the second move this week from that VPS to a small dedicated server from Rackmounted – which actually is the same company! This one is a bit harder to explain. The VPS was normally fast enough to serve the blog (there was another VPS on the same server running amok for a few days that impacted performance, though). But the VPS has limited bandwidth and under load created a user experience on the blog that I found simply disappointing. So I figured I’d try a dedicated server.

I searched hard to find a hosting service that is at the same time cheap (affordable?) and reliable and provides good customer service. I searched the forums, I contacted some of the budget vendors. Scary stuff – response times of three days and more, sales people and technical support people who clearly know very little about the infrastructure and systems that they sell. And in general a lack of “service attitude” that was disheartening. Worstcase example was WSServer (I won’t provide a link here – they don’t deserve that). But several others weren’t much better.

Rackmounted on the other hand was a positive surprise. It’s a small company of about nine people that cover both the VPS and the dedicated server side of the the house. They respond to requests within hours (and sometimes minutes). They try to understand what you are trying to do. They don’t assume that you are stupid (this sounds silly, but let me tell you, it makes all the difference if the tech support person you talk to assumes that you know what you are doing and tries to work with you instead of trying to get rid of you).

The coolest thing was when I told them that I was looking at a dedicated server but wasn’t really able to justify the expense of the servers that they were offering. I asked if they had any specials, any old hardware that they could offer at a discount (and flat out told them the price range that I was looking for). And they got right back to me, made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse and set it up right away.

Really cool. Really surprising. And I’m happy to recommend them to anyone looking for affordable high quality hosting. Regardless of VPS or dedicated server.

The performance difference to the VPS is stunning. I’m very happy.