"Jason Pyeron" <jpyeron at pdinc.us> writes: > > Everyone's pushing you to one of the VPS providers because > > that's what all the cool kids are doing now that VM > > technology is commoditized. > > > > I do not have an opinion on this. I think people are pushing the VPS service because people who are interested in administering the OS are likely to want the provider to handle the hardware and network, but let them handle the Linux stuff. this is where the responsibility is split on a VPS. And it is a very clean and clear line, which I like. I am responsible for the [virtual] hardware and network, you are responsible for the Linux bits. Very clear. when you are down, you know who is responsible. (I am a vps provider, but I am not what you want. I do have a SLA on the hardware/network, but I don't even have a login account on your VPS. I like it. I get to play with the bits I like. ) another note: I would focus less on SLA and more on how often they are down (and how open they are about downtime. Hiding downtime is a very bad sign.) Does a free month really make up for any significant amount of downtime? If you want that line to be between your code and whatever language/framework you wrote your app in, you need to get specialized hosting for that language/app. You are probably going to pay more for this than for more 'generic' hosting or even than for VPS hosting, but if you aren't good at or don't like being a SysAdmin, well, it's probably worth it. Personally, I think you should ask on a mailing list for whatever your webapp is written in. I know there are several hosting companies who specialize in doing what you want for ruby on rails, and thousands who specialize in doing this for PHP.