Ask HN: Webdev Consultants, what hosting do you recommend to clients?

2 points·jshen··2 comments

I've have done consulting in a number of years, but I'm bidding for a project as we speak. I'm wondering what hosting options make the most sense for small to medium sized green field projects. I'm leaning towards heroku or google app engine since they require zero maintenance and offer many additional services like full text search, background jobs, etc. What are your thoughts?

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Depends on the client and the needs. I generally don't deal with hosting at all (or client already has hosting.) Honestly, most web devs aren't qualified to deal with hosting anyways. I'm okay with using my own knowledge to setup a dedicated server when bootstrapping my own web projects but I would rather have my client get that taken care of for me. If the client insists, then I would simply make a list of managed providers.

For me personally, Storm On Demand has some nice offerings including an option for managed support. Heroku is also great, but I'm not sure I would put a client on it. Perhaps the client needs to work with a different developer in the future who doesn't work with Git and would rather have direct access to the file system, etc.

I haven't used a managed host in years, but back then I was really disappointed with what I got for the money. Do they ensure that the site is on the latest patched ruby, mysql, etc?

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