TextDrive continues to impress the Rails

TextDrive is pioneering a new frontier for web hosting. Gone are the days where web hosts where merely a slice on a shared machine and a "good luck!". TextDrive has evolved the web hosting business into an application and framework hosting business.

This is particularly relevant for Rails as its the framework of choice for TextDrive. And they just upped the dedication another notch as they took on Marten Veldthuis:

Rails savant Marten Veldthuis is coming on as a TextDrive staffer. While being one of developer partners for some time and helping out with Rails support issues, he’s officially coming on part-time (he is still in school you know) to develop best practices for Rails development and deployment, write and curate Rails chapters in Manuals and to continue helping in the support system.

I'm continuously proud to be affiliated with TextDrive (they donate 50% of the profits on Rails' plans to further Rails development). They get it and their plans for the future is incredibly inspiring. From their uptake of lighttpd to their home-growned applications such as TextPanel.

Congratulations, Jason, Dean, and the rest of the crew. The whole Rails world will be hosting with you guys in no time. This is the place to be if you're getting into Rails. Join the community.

I second the recommendation. Hosting with textdrive is a bliss, and their support staff is extremely quick, friendly and knowledgable.

Anyone got an idea if TextPanel is going to be OpenSource? I'd love to host our clients on TextDrive, but Swedish clients tend to prefer to have their website or webapp located in Sweden.

Wow, I just discovered them this morning... promptly dumped my old host and signed up.

Unlimited Subversion repositories? That clinched it for me.

I read about TextDrive hosting on your blog and I signed up [it was for some months ago...] I needed mod_python hosting and I waited over 2 weeks for it- - at last I gave up. I could had been unlucky, but... Let's hope they are better at hosting ror applications :]

I canceled about a week after signing up with them. There support was extrememly slow and I got sick of going in circles with them. Creating DB's wasn't working, and I had to explain this over and over again. It never actually got fixed. The best part is when I canceled I received no notification or anything. Thats just immature business.

It seems like everyone backs them here. And I wish I could, but my experience was awful. I am not trying to flame. If anything I hope they learn from the mistakes and improve. In the mean time I am setting up my own hosting with some friends on an xserve.

I certainly think it's best to set up your own hosting if you have the ability, anyway, Adam, whether TextDrive are good or not. You get such freedom and learn a lot, although the learning curve can be a little steep ;-)