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Where do YC applicants host their projects?

40 points by white ↗ HN
Hi everyone,

Quick question: what do YC applicants prefer - dedicated servers, co-location, VPS, regular hosting plans or somethings else? Where are they being hosted at? Are there any major hub of startup hosting?

Thanks!

42 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 707 ms ] thread
prakash
I will answer the hosting part of your question.

1. get a list of all YC companies 2. get the AS (Autonomous System) number plugin for firefox 3. visit these YC companies to figure out where they are hosted

kobs
This method presumes that all hosting companies have an ASN. Often, this will just tell you who the connection provider(s) is (are).
yrashk
Although I am not an YC applicant (I wish I was but my co-founders will not relocate), I am pretty happy with dedicated boxes at The Planet
palish
Apply anyway.
yrashk
What is the reason to apply if I am the only co-founder ready to move? I am afraid it is not following YC model
cperciva
According to pg, exceptions can be made to any rule if the rest of the application is good enough.

I applied as a sole founder who was unable to move to the bay area -- breaking the requirements far more than you -- until it turned out that I wouldn't be able to fly out for the November 3rd/4th weekend.

icey
I've also had amazing luck with The Planet; I've used them for about 4 years now and have only had one problem with an outage. I found out about my outage from them, and they were already working to resolve the issue. I think I was down for about 30 minutes total in the middle of the night on a Wednesday, so it wasn't a big deal at all.
jamiequint
We have two servers (for various project sites) both VPS One from RimuHosting and one from Slicehost. Both are excellent, although you pay significantly more for Rimu but they have the best service I've ever encountered with a VPS hosting solution. We also have an EC2 invite but haven't got around to trying it out.
SwellJoe
We've got two boxes at The Planet, and we're planning a box at RackSpace, and probably an Accelerator from Joyent. A lot of the guys I know from YC use the following hosts and said at least a few good things about them:

Joyent/TextDrive

Rails Machine

Amazone EC2 (though I also hear a lot of reliability complaints)

Rimu

Slice

There is no major concensus on the best. I've been using The Planet and RackSpace, or the cheaper ServerBeach offering from the RackSpace folks, for many years and have never had any complaints. Service is good and reliable, prices are fair (RackSpace is a wee bit pricier, but they provide good service and reliability).

cstejerean
The company where I currently work just moved away from Rackspace. Their prices are high and as far as I know (I didn't deal directly with rackspace) we had interesting performance issues due to their networking setup. I wouldn't recommend them but you might have better luck.
blored
Somebody please correct the title.
cperciva
Taking the list of YC-funded companies from wikipedia, excluding those marked as defunct or sold, resolving www.${domain} to an IP address, and then looking that up via whois, I see:

Amazon.com (presumably EC2?) -- 2

Layered Technologies, Inc. -- 2

NoZone, Inc. -- 2

Rackspace.com, Ltd. -- 2

Software Technologies Inc. -- 2

BitPusher, LLC -- 1

Carnegie Mellon University -- 1

Columbus Network Access Point, Inc. -- 1

Global Netoptex, Inc -- 1

ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc. -- 1

So it looks like YC-funded companies usually have dedicated servers, but there's no single place where they tend to congregate.

breck
Now that's a great reply that adds value. Unlike this one.
iamyoohoo
Next time try whoishostingthis.com instead of whois - quicker for knowing who's hosting them.
cperciva
I could query whois for a list of IP addresses by piping the list through "xargs -n 1 whois". It would have been rather more complicated if I wanted to query a website.

EDIT: Here's the code in case anyone's curious -- note that most of it is just a list of domain names:

echo anywhere.fm adpinion.com fuzzwich.com slapvid.com versionate.com auctomatic.com buxfer.com heysan.com octopart.com socialmoth.com virtualmin.com weebly.com whitenoisenetworks.com writewith.com xobni.com iilwy.com jamglue.com scribd.com thinkature.com justin.tv audiobeta.com flagr.com inklingmarkets.com snipshot.com sproutsys.com wufoo.com clickfacts.com loopt.com | xargs -n 1 | lam -s 'www.' - | xargs -n 1 host -t a | grep 'has address' | cut -f 4 -d ' ' | xargs -n 1 whois | grep OrgName | sort | uniq -c | sort -srn

zurla
there are a couple at Softlayer.com too
cperciva
Oops -- the "Software Technologies" above was a subconscious mental correction from "SoftLAYER Technologies".
palish
A little-known, fantastic host is Reflected Networks (http://www.reflected.net). I talked them down to an insanely cheap monthly rate for a dedicated server with 3mbps. It's so inexpensive that I'm worried Mr. CEO will fire whomever did it.. :) The service there is fantastic: Zero downtime, free support, and a quick setup. So you should shoot them an email to see what special rates you can get (much less than what they advertise on their site).
rms
Just how cheap are we talking... less than $50 a month?
palish
Does anyone have any thoughts on ServerBeach (http://www.serverbeach.com)? I've heard YouTube started with them.
blored
Yeah, I know for a fact that a bunch of YC companies use them. I was told so by a YC founder. So we signed up with them and so far no complaints. They are quick, and somehow they caught wind of when we launched and sent us an e-mail asking of there was anything they could do for us. It was a nice touch.
breck
I don't care what anybody says, we use GoDaddy and they're great.

(Not for heavy duty stuff, but great for low traffic stuff)

yrashk
It was horrible experience for me on this weekend. For some reason ext3fs on a dedicated server we use was a bit corrupted and since they do not ofer KVM I was first suggested to reprovision server. Then I was suggested to buy a new hard drive to rescue data. Then I was suggested to pay them $150 fee to swap drives. After few calls to their sales support and wasting several hours talking with them and waiting for their decisions the fee was waived. After all, three days later I got my data. They are cheap, but when you're in trouble, you're in trouble.
icey
GoDaddy is fine, until you have problems. I did a consulting gig once in the same office complex as them, and I had better luck getting an issue fixed by asking random smokers out front of their building if they could change something for me than I did calling their support number and going through the escalation procedures.
fauigerzigerk
I had endless problems with them. But it's probably the right host for people who "don't care what anybody says" so I'll save some typing ;-)
henryw
i had a hard drive die on me after 6 months in. they are cheap and decent, but if you do use them make sure you cron some auto backups. right now i have it on raid 1.
yrashk
I had filesystem corrupted after 3 months or so.
pius
I couldn't tell you where YC applicants host anything, but we've had a nearly flawless experience with Slicehost.
abstractbill
Slicehost have fantastic customer service but unfortunately had problems hosting SBCL when I tried them (SBCL is known to interact badly with bugs in some versions of Xen).
thomasswift
I am on a slicehost VPS. I think it is probably the best deal for money, in terms of memory allocation.
stoic
I advise anyone who is considering hosting with Layered to take backups -- frequently. Drives fail like third-world goverments over there.
iamyoohoo
For anyone considering a host - be sure to check out webhostingtalk.com - you will find out whether your chosen host has had issues with others. You can also find some great deals from top hosts there ...
fdb
MediaTemple anyone?
robmnl
Can't recommend them.

Been with them for a month, major outage earlier this month for two days.

They seem good for blogs, or staging, but if you require reliability, go somewhere else.

chaostheory
I have to agree.

Their admin UI is great and their staff is really helpful; but it's been days and they still haven't resolved their issues...

carter
We use colocation for now.
foodawg
Been using Voxel.net since July. No complaints.
mchristoff
Site5. Excellent support. They answered a question of mine 2AM on Christmas Day.