Ask:Which is the preferred hosting solution of the web startups?

Slicehost (+ AWS)

Also see: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...

For virtualized systems, a lot of our customers are very happy with Linode. We also have folks that seem extremely happy using Joyent and Rimuhosting. AWS is very promising, but has a history of reliability problems that makes me less enthusiastic about it than I want to be.

We've got dedicated boxes at The Planet and Softlayer. We've been happy with the hosting experience at both, though Softlayer has exhibited some very shifty billing practices...so I probably wouldn't go with them in the future.

It's either Slicehost or Linode when you're starting out... Slicehost is slightly preferred here for their more stable architecture, but Linode is slightly cheaper and realistically just as good.

engineyard is good for rails