python-friendly web hosts: buyer beware

[Ian Bicking]

On Thu, 2002-05-23 at 18:10, Graham Dumpleton wrote:
> > (http://valueweb.net/products/enterprise_hosting.html proudly advertises 
> > Python as an "Advanced Feature" of their $299.00/month Enterprise Hosting 
> > package.)
> 
> For that amount of money, you would be much better going to iServer (now
> part of viaVerio). From about a third of that price you get your own
> virtual host to which you can telnet/ssh and get full UNIX shell access
> to do what you want.

I used another virtual host in the same style -- Superb
(www.superb.net).  I wanted to host Webware, which really doesn't jive
well with most hosts -- even otherwise Python friendly ones (due to the
long-running process of the AppServer).  Anyway, I wasn't particularly
impressed with them -- the performance, net speed, and up time were all
fine but not great.  But I believe you get more access than with Verio
-- full root access to do whatever you want.  No limitations to the
number of POP mailboxes, unix users, or anything else.

But I wasn't terribly happy, so I've switched to SmartHosting
(www.smarthosting.com).  It's a dedicated computer for $100/mo.  There's
several other hosts in the same price range.  I've just gotten access
today, so I have no idea how it'll be.  But they installed just the OS I
wanted (Debian), and the performance and disk space is a lot more than
with Superb.

We'll see... unlimited web serving with name-based domains from Apache
is pretty nice, though... whatever little site your heart desires is
only the price of the domain name.

  Ian