Chart of YC companies' hosting decisions, 2010 edition(jpf.github.com)
jpf.github.com
Chart of YC companies' hosting decisions, 2010 edition
http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2010
34 comments
I'm very surprised how many people use GoDaddy in any form. To leave your domain name in the hands of some one with such a bad reputation seems risky. eg. http://www.google.com/search?q=go+daddy+stole+my+domain+name
Maybe for YC 2011 we could have a start up compete with GoDaddy. If some one started a trustworthy domain register targeted at start ups I could see it doing well.
Maybe for YC 2011 we could have a start up compete with GoDaddy. If some one started a trustworthy domain register targeted at start ups I could see it doing well.
Found this post recently at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1004995.
This report actually checked an average of all name servers on Pingdom for a month. The full posting said:
I have been really down on Dynect because of their sales approach and their in-the-face cocky attitude. My very few interactions with them have been to immediately put down companies and competitors with complete BS statements.
But I have seen many people say how great the performance is. So did a pingdom test for all of their servers (used Twitter) and I did a test for all of my name servers on DNS Made Easy.
These are averages for "ALL" name servers.
DNS Made Easy: Avg. Response Time 34 ms Slowest avg. response time 58 ms Fastest avg. response time 23 ms
Dynect: Avg. Response Time 37 ms Slowest avg. response time 59 ms Fastest avg. response time 27 ms
Now Pingdom only does US and Europe testing... nothing in Asia where is looks like Dynect is stronger. But their network is no where as strong as they say it is. I have done as many trace routes as possible and I can never get a query answered in their singapore or australia locations.
So really... I do not get it.... Where is Dynect faster? Now I know this is only for the past month.... but really.... I think DNS Made Easy runs a hell of a network and they are a fraction of the Dynect guys (whom I have negative feelings about anyway).
Looking at tools like www.dnscomparison.com it looks like DNSMadeEasy is fastest some weeks, Dynect is fast other weeks, UltraDNS is faster some other weeks. Of course I'm not sure how "honest" this is as well.
But create a pingdom account... do some tests... be interested in seeing other results.
So far I say that DNSMadeEasy is as fast or faster then the ones that are many times more expensive.
This report actually checked an average of all name servers on Pingdom for a month. The full posting said:
I have been really down on Dynect because of their sales approach and their in-the-face cocky attitude. My very few interactions with them have been to immediately put down companies and competitors with complete BS statements.
But I have seen many people say how great the performance is. So did a pingdom test for all of their servers (used Twitter) and I did a test for all of my name servers on DNS Made Easy.
These are averages for "ALL" name servers.
DNS Made Easy: Avg. Response Time 34 ms Slowest avg. response time 58 ms Fastest avg. response time 23 ms
Dynect: Avg. Response Time 37 ms Slowest avg. response time 59 ms Fastest avg. response time 27 ms
Now Pingdom only does US and Europe testing... nothing in Asia where is looks like Dynect is stronger. But their network is no where as strong as they say it is. I have done as many trace routes as possible and I can never get a query answered in their singapore or australia locations.
So really... I do not get it.... Where is Dynect faster? Now I know this is only for the past month.... but really.... I think DNS Made Easy runs a hell of a network and they are a fraction of the Dynect guys (whom I have negative feelings about anyway).
Looking at tools like www.dnscomparison.com it looks like DNSMadeEasy is fastest some weeks, Dynect is fast other weeks, UltraDNS is faster some other weeks. Of course I'm not sure how "honest" this is as well.
But create a pingdom account... do some tests... be interested in seeing other results.
So far I say that DNSMadeEasy is as fast or faster then the ones that are many times more expensive.
Dynect has been super fast and reliable for us. Their customer service is also top notch.
If your serious about availability, this is the place to start.
If your serious about availability, this is the place to start.
Yes the pricing is just ridiculous.... I never knew that the Dynect SMB went over 600k... they must have just increased that recently.... But $95 per month for 1.8 million queries.... INSANE!!! and now Amazon Route 53 is 50 cents per million queries..... they are going to eat everyone's lunch!
Any data on Amazon's route53 DNS offering?
Nope, it was just these 3 (as we were deciding between DNSMadeEasy and Dynect, and wanted to throw Godaddy in there for comparison).
Although we currently use DNSMadeEasy, and due to the uptime issues we might be looking to switch at which point I'll cast a broader net. Of course if you have a pingdom account, setting up these DNS checks is quite easy. They have a special monitoring type just for DNS.
Although we currently use DNSMadeEasy, and due to the uptime issues we might be looking to switch at which point I'll cast a broader net. Of course if you have a pingdom account, setting up these DNS checks is quite easy. They have a special monitoring type just for DNS.
What uptime issues? We have used DNS Made Easy for over 8 years and have never seen any uptime problems at all. Checking one name server through Pingdom is not giving you a detailed review of name servers. You could have checked another name server in Dynect and they could of had twice as much downtime... but still Dynect was up.
Showing one name server is good, but it is not judging a providers "downtime". Would be much more useful if you tested all name servers. If several were down at once then yes... there is a good chance that you could loose a query.
Thanks for the efforts though.
Showing one name server is good, but it is not judging a providers "downtime". Would be much more useful if you tested all name servers. If several were down at once then yes... there is a good chance that you could loose a query.
Thanks for the efforts though.
Were the DNSMadeEasy outages related to their DDoS after they terminated DNS services for Wikileaks?
Well to be completely fair to DNSMadeEasy, this failure wasn't necessarily their entire service, it was just the one nameserver pingdom was testing, ns10.dnsmadeeasy.com. However, both GoDaddy and Dynect were tested using just one nameserver, so the comparison is fair.
I'm not sure what the cause of it was though.
I'm not sure what the cause of it was though.
Not 'fair' if you're posting statistics from one nameserver of each in order to represent uptime for the service as a whole.
Which name server were you using from each provider?
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Our company (Gamador) is listed as hosting from "Global Net Access LLC" which I had never heard of - we just use Linode. So there might be some Linode undercounting going on.
I apparently need to do a little more work on programmatically detecting companies hosted by Linode.
Comments, ideas, bugs and patches welcome. The program I used to generate the report is hosted on GitHub here: https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/
Comments, ideas, bugs and patches welcome. The program I used to generate the report is hosted on GitHub here: https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/
I believe Global Net Access LLC owns the subnet of IP addresses that Linode use.
FWIW Linode has 5 datacenters, and at least 5 address ranges, so there may be more undercounting going on for them.
I updated my script to take that into account. The page has has been updated to reflect that change.
Heroku IPs are 75.101.163.44, 75.101.145.87, and 174.129.212.2, if you want to update the script to make the distinction from raw Amazon EC2.
Yeah, I was confused by the lack of people using Heroku.
Linode's Fremont DC is owned by Hurricane Electric which is also being mis-represented.
Okay! I've updated my chart. Companies that are using Linode should be accurately reported now.
This is mostly thanks to the suggestion from HN user jedsmith. I've updated my script to incorporate what should be a more accurate way of determining the name of an organization that owns a particular IP address.
This is mostly thanks to the suggestion from HN user jedsmith. I've updated my script to incorporate what should be a more accurate way of determining the name of an organization that owns a particular IP address.
Yes, there's something very strange here when there are ~6 companies using Linode for DNS but only one for hosting - I'm happy to be corrected but I'd be quite surprised if people use Linode DNS without also using the hosting.
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Net Access Corp is the owner of the datacenter Linode uses in Newark
So despite the vociferous defense app engine received here about a month ago after some criticism it looks like no YC companies actually use it?
It looks like this is considering only the root domain, and for App Engine hosted sites this would probably be an external server not hosted by Google that just redirects you to the www subdomain (where you'd have your CNAME to ghs.google.com), so they wouldn't show up as such.
Wattvision is hosted on App Engine.
Wattvision is hosted on App Engine.
This. As jf says below, "host is determined by the name of the owner of the netblock that the IP address of the A record for that domain is in..."
You can't point an A record at App Engine.
You can't point an A record at App Engine.
It could be that the app isn't hosted at the same place as the public site (which this chart reports on). That's how it is for Zencoder.
I think a large part of this has to do with programming language choice. I suspect there is a large group of ruby hackers out there who can only use Amazon, and not GAE.
A survey of language choice by YC companies would be interesting - I think Python is actually very well represented.
I'd guess that the reason people aren't using AppEngine is more that it's strategically a pretty bad idea. You can't move off it, and its constraints have a major effect on how you design and architect your application. When you're still figuring out what your product is, using a platform that requires you to design your data storage to fit the queries you are going to run isn't necessarily that smart.
I'd guess that the reason people aren't using AppEngine is more that it's strategically a pretty bad idea. You can't move off it, and its constraints have a major effect on how you design and architect your application. When you're still figuring out what your product is, using a platform that requires you to design your data storage to fit the queries you are going to run isn't necessarily that smart.
Wasn't data access very slow up until recently? From the outside I question how important GAE is to Google, has it got a decent sized team behind it and will it always be around. With Amazon cloud hosting seems much more of a key business. Of course this is from the outside if I were considering options, I don't use either of them.
unless exit.goal == google.buy(self)
I second that. Wouldn't be hard to add the languages.
Heroku seems like a better analog to AppEngine for Rubyists than Amazon's services.
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I'm surprised not to see more alternatives to GoDaddy for registrars (say, NameCheap.) GoDaddy interface and upselling are simply infuriating and I've always thought of it as a "Wal-Mart for domains/etc," not something a tech-savvy startup would use.
I find this chart fascinating - though I'm wondering how much of Rackspace is Rackspace "Cloud" and how much of Rackspace is "VPS". Also, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of SoftLayer as a server hosting company - I wonder what the attraction there is.
For Web Hosts it comes (roughly) to:
For Web Hosts it comes (roughly) to:
o Amazon EC2
o Rackspace Cloud
o Self Hosted (Surprisingly large number)
o Slicehost
o Hurricane Electric (which is likely self hosted? EDIT (per jedsmith) Linode?)
#1 - Small use of Linode
#2 - How much Rackspace is used more than Slicehost.
SoftLayer is a superb dedicated hosting provider--maybe the best. They have a competent staff, several datacenters all over the US, a very good, low-latency network (public and private), high-quality management tools, super high uptime and QOS, and fair pricing.
So if you want to run on bare metal, but you don't want to rack servers yourself, they're a compelling option.
(I'm [email protected], and as you can see from the spreadsheet, we use softlayer)
So if you want to run on bare metal, but you don't want to rack servers yourself, they're a compelling option.
(I'm [email protected], and as you can see from the spreadsheet, we use softlayer)
I operate a server management company.
We we have worked with many providers, including all of those listed.
We continue to recommend Softlayer for leased dedicated hardware needs because of the features they provide, and the solid network infrastructure (although they do have hiccups on occasion).
Softlayer has a great support team, fast server deployment (1-2 hours) and full management capabilities - power strip reboot, IPMI KVM, OS reloads, etc..
We we have worked with many providers, including all of those listed.
We continue to recommend Softlayer for leased dedicated hardware needs because of the features they provide, and the solid network infrastructure (although they do have hiccups on occasion).
Softlayer has a great support team, fast server deployment (1-2 hours) and full management capabilities - power strip reboot, IPMI KVM, OS reloads, etc..
I wouldn't trust Softlayer with my clients' data. Look at what happened to SimpleCDN and others. In a matter of a couple of days Softlayer pulled the plug on all their servers. SimpleCDN was erased from the CDN map. They used to have over 100 servers with them.
Regards
Regards
We've hosted our site at SoftLayer since 2006 and trust them with our customers' data. We have a significant investment in time and money in them (dozens of servers in 3 datacenters) and don't regret it.
The SimpleCDN issue involved three parties: SimpleCDN, 100TB (aka UK2), and SoftLayer. We've only heard from SimpleCDN and they threatened to sue the other two, so the silence is not surprising. In any case, my opinion of SoftLayer didn't change as a result.
The SimpleCDN issue involved three parties: SimpleCDN, 100TB (aka UK2), and SoftLayer. We've only heard from SimpleCDN and they threatened to sue the other two, so the silence is not surprising. In any case, my opinion of SoftLayer didn't change as a result.
FileVo is another victim. They were shutdown by none other than Softlayer without providing a reason for termination.
I do admire your courage.
Regards
I do admire your courage.
Regards
I didn't know about FileVo. I just read up on their situation and curiously, it's another issue involving UK2 (in this case their MidPhase brand) and SoftLayer.
Both the SimpleCDN and FileVo shutdowns do look bad. But I'm not relying on courage, I'm relying on experience. Over four years I personally have had hundreds of phone, email, and forum interactions with SoftLayer at every level from their CEO to first level support. And countless DMCA requests. If I believed based on those experiences I was at risk hosting my company and my livelihood there, you better believe I would beat a path to the door.
Both the SimpleCDN and FileVo shutdowns do look bad. But I'm not relying on courage, I'm relying on experience. Over four years I personally have had hundreds of phone, email, and forum interactions with SoftLayer at every level from their CEO to first level support. And countless DMCA requests. If I believed based on those experiences I was at risk hosting my company and my livelihood there, you better believe I would beat a path to the door.
From what I understand of FileVo, they were running a file upload service, not retaining any identifying information on uploaders, and not taking any steps to prevent copyrighted files from being uploaded. Softlayer's decision to terminate their hosting was no different from what any other hosting company would do (and, in fact, what they would be legally required to do!).
> Anybody care to comment on why SoftLayer is so predominant?
My guesses are: (a) they provide dedicated servers that are comparable to Rackspace but at a lower cost (but with a support trade-off), (b) they also offer cloud computing and storage instances that are decent (in my experience).
My guesses are: (a) they provide dedicated servers that are comparable to Rackspace but at a lower cost (but with a support trade-off), (b) they also offer cloud computing and storage instances that are decent (in my experience).
The small use of Linode is a mistake in the script.
Softlayer also just bought The Planet, although I am not sure if that has anything to do with it...
Doesn't YC have a special discount with one or more of the hosting providers, which might be influencing decisions?
I'm not affiliated with the company in anyway, but I'm a big fan of http://iwantmyname.com/ for domain registration. Super quick and easy especially if you're using Heroku or GAE.
It's depressing how little GoDaddy has innovated and how dominant it still is.
It's depressing how little GoDaddy has innovated and how dominant it still is.
For me, a domain name is a commodity, so I go for the cheapest: GoDaddy.
It is but I value my time more than the one dollar difference between GoDaddy and namecheap... I don't want to spend time navigating through all the bunch of upsell crap from GoDaddy and then pulling my hair dealing with their awful dns settings...
1and1 is almost always cheaper than GoDaddy. Currently it's $4.99 for the first year and $8.99 afterwards. GoDaddy is $11.99 per year.
You never have to pay full retail at GoDaddy. Not for .com at least. There's at least one coupon available 365 days a year; check retailmenot.com.
I pay nearly at registration costs elsewhere. Godaddy isn't the cheapest.
Godaddy has done the most/best marketing, that's all.
Godaddy has done the most/best marketing, that's all.
Many people expressed the same sentiment when I posted this last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746386
I did note a small reduction in the percentage of YC domains registered with GoDaddy, but nothing significant. :/
I did note a small reduction in the percentage of YC domains registered with GoDaddy, but nothing significant. :/
I'd like to move my email away from Google Apps, for various reasons, but they have the best spam filter by far. It's worth sticking with them just for that.
Would you care to elaborate? I'm just getting to grips with Google Apps and would be interested in what experiences others have had with it.
I'm interested in seeing aggregates of technology choices like: primary database, main programming language(s), frameworks, etc
I'd love to see that too, but it's not something you can easily identify just by querying their web server. This list was compiled using the domain-profiler tool:
https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler
https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler
Oh, a bit of a side note on hosting for startups. I know many people want to save costs by centralizing hosting, but as a word of advice keep your database, mail, and web servers separated. By not doing so you've created a single point of failure. Not only that, but it makes securing things appropriately more difficult (ie. you are unable to create only web server specific firewall rules for the server).
A good trick we've been using while building http://www.webpop.com has been to use the cheap small instances on the Rackspace cloud to build a mini version of a nice distributed setup with load balancers, web servers, database servers, monitoring, etc...
The small instances are very cheap, and we've been automating everything with chef, so it's east for us to gradually scale up by adding large instances to our cluster instead of small ones.
This means we've been able to build a scalable and secure infrastructure, that didn't cost us much more than a hundred bucks a month during development.
The small instances are very cheap, and we've been automating everything with chef, so it's east for us to gradually scale up by adding large instances to our cluster instead of small ones.
This means we've been able to build a scalable and secure infrastructure, that didn't cost us much more than a hundred bucks a month during development.
We've been doing the same thing on Linode, and initially did our development on Rackspace cloud. One important thing to note about Rackspace cloud is that your private network bandwidth is limited to 10mbps when you're on their small Xen instances - this may not be a big deal during development, but after you go live if you have any traction, then with simultaneous backups, sql replication, and any other chatter that might be happening between servers, it can really "slow down", and you might end up having to move to larger instances simply for the port speed, even though your existing server is sufficient in regards to CPU, RAM and disk.
Our testing ended up leading us back to Linode, since with a simple support ticket you can up your private interface to the full 100mbps. So our "combo" ended up being Linode + Amazon S3 (since for many of our items the reduced redundancy storage is sufficient, and is half the price of could files).
It's sure fun though setting up your own small "cloud" system ;)
Our testing ended up leading us back to Linode, since with a simple support ticket you can up your private interface to the full 100mbps. So our "combo" ended up being Linode + Amazon S3 (since for many of our items the reduced redundancy storage is sufficient, and is half the price of could files).
It's sure fun though setting up your own small "cloud" system ;)
Anyone that's self-hosting email care to explain why they're doing it? Seems like something that makes no sense to do internally until you start getting more "enterprisey".
I'm not affiliated with a YC company, but I do self-host my email. My reasons:
1. I'm a control freak and a privacy freak. I don't trust any third party with my email. I want to know how things work under the hood. And if I want to make a change, I don't want to have to depend on any third party to do it.
2. It's not hard to do. apt-get install postfix and dovecot, invest a couple of hours munging config files, and you're done.
3. Much easier to transition your data if you do get "enterprisey." All your data is on your server, so you can just tar it up and ship it anywhere.
4. You can configure the server so that insecure connections are not possible, making it that much less likely that someone will leak a password accidentally.
5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers.
1. I'm a control freak and a privacy freak. I don't trust any third party with my email. I want to know how things work under the hood. And if I want to make a change, I don't want to have to depend on any third party to do it.
2. It's not hard to do. apt-get install postfix and dovecot, invest a couple of hours munging config files, and you're done.
3. Much easier to transition your data if you do get "enterprisey." All your data is on your server, so you can just tar it up and ship it anywhere.
4. You can configure the server so that insecure connections are not possible, making it that much less likely that someone will leak a password accidentally.
5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers.
2. It's not hard to do. apt-get install postfix and dovecot, invest a couple of hours munging config files, and you're done
edit: don't forget adding additional storage, managing spam and malware filtering, user admin, backups, and other tasks.
5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers.
> Bullshit. There's troubleshooting when things go wrong, patching, maintenance, etc.
In over 10 years of hosting my own email I've never had a problem that needed troubleshooting after getting the initial installation sorted out. And patching on Debian is trivial.
> Your single server is much easier to target and break into than Google's.
"Stealth" does not mean "harder to break into", it means "less likely to attract the attention of someone with the means and motivation to break in." Google may be harder to break into, but it's a much bigger target.
My house is easier to break into than, say, Bagram air force base. That doesn't mean that I'm safer in Bagram.
In over 10 years of hosting my own email I've never had a problem that needed troubleshooting after getting the initial installation sorted out. And patching on Debian is trivial.
> Your single server is much easier to target and break into than Google's.
"Stealth" does not mean "harder to break into", it means "less likely to attract the attention of someone with the means and motivation to break in." Google may be harder to break into, but it's a much bigger target.
My house is easier to break into than, say, Bagram air force base. That doesn't mean that I'm safer in Bagram.
And patching on Debian is trivial.
Patching is never trivial. The process itself may be trivial, but you have to actually do it. That latter part requires ongoing attention, which makes it non-trivial.
less likely to attract the attention of someone with the means and motivation to break in
That depends. Most attackers go for low hanging fruit. And the fruit hardly hangs low at google with their dedicated security team.
The most juicy targets are actually those little homebrew servers that someone once setup and then mostly forgot about. The spammers can often use these servers for months before anyone (usually the ISP, not the owner) takes notice.
If your server is listening on Port 25 then it's not stealth. It's very likely being scanned while I write this comment - perhaps to see if it's an exim vulnerable to the recent remote-shell exploit (http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2131).
So, to wrap this up. I also run mailservers for various companies. I also run debian. I even also run dovecot and postfix. But I'm doing this for a living, am subscribed to the relevant security mailing lists, harden the hosts before deploying them, and I monitor them.
If you don't have a dedicated or hired admin to do all that then hosted e-mail usually has the better value proposition.
Patching is never trivial. The process itself may be trivial, but you have to actually do it. That latter part requires ongoing attention, which makes it non-trivial.
less likely to attract the attention of someone with the means and motivation to break in
That depends. Most attackers go for low hanging fruit. And the fruit hardly hangs low at google with their dedicated security team.
The most juicy targets are actually those little homebrew servers that someone once setup and then mostly forgot about. The spammers can often use these servers for months before anyone (usually the ISP, not the owner) takes notice.
If your server is listening on Port 25 then it's not stealth. It's very likely being scanned while I write this comment - perhaps to see if it's an exim vulnerable to the recent remote-shell exploit (http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2131).
So, to wrap this up. I also run mailservers for various companies. I also run debian. I even also run dovecot and postfix. But I'm doing this for a living, am subscribed to the relevant security mailing lists, harden the hosts before deploying them, and I monitor them.
If you don't have a dedicated or hired admin to do all that then hosted e-mail usually has the better value proposition.
If you're new to running a mail server or linux server, then yes, lots of troubleshooting, etc... If you have someone who knows what they're doing, it's really not a big deal. I don't think I've had to spend any time on any of my mail servers in ages.
Not sure what you mean by additional storage? Local corporate e-mail might take up ~10GB per person after a few years? Most of my servers have 1+ TB of local storage + SAN. Takes a lot of e-mail to fill that up.
Spam and malware filtering are both pretty easy. yum/apt-get install clam and/or spamassissin/razor/pyzor/whatever. If you're running your own server(s) anyhow then backups, user admin, etc... are a sunk cost you've already spent.
If you're running your own servers anyhow, it's really not a big deal. I have a normal GMail account and a enterprise google apps account and both of them have pretty frequent IMAP outages (usually just for 5-15 minutes, nothing serious) whereas my mail servers haven't been down in years (minus planned server migrations). Also, if something does break, I like being able to go in and fix it, without waiting for other people.
Not sure what you mean by additional storage? Local corporate e-mail might take up ~10GB per person after a few years? Most of my servers have 1+ TB of local storage + SAN. Takes a lot of e-mail to fill that up.
Spam and malware filtering are both pretty easy. yum/apt-get install clam and/or spamassissin/razor/pyzor/whatever. If you're running your own server(s) anyhow then backups, user admin, etc... are a sunk cost you've already spent.
If you're running your own servers anyhow, it's really not a big deal. I have a normal GMail account and a enterprise google apps account and both of them have pretty frequent IMAP outages (usually just for 5-15 minutes, nothing serious) whereas my mail servers haven't been down in years (minus planned server migrations). Also, if something does break, I like being able to go in and fix it, without waiting for other people.
With Google email hosting you just have to worry about a few hundred people who can read all your email, their data retention policies, and who can subpoena your private communications.
(conspiracy theory: Google gives the public one text box on a webpage to search the Internet. Do you think they don't have a text box on an internal webpage to search all of Gmail? Do you think facebook doesn't have one internal webpage capable of searching all private communications? Facebook used to advertise "spy on your friends!" as an employment perk.)
(conspiracy theory: Google gives the public one text box on a webpage to search the Internet. Do you think they don't have a text box on an internal webpage to search all of Gmail? Do you think facebook doesn't have one internal webpage capable of searching all private communications? Facebook used to advertise "spy on your friends!" as an employment perk.)
> Do you think they don't have a text box on an internal webpage to search all of Gmail?
That kind of thing would leak out sooner or later.
That kind of thing would leak out sooner or later.
Google had a rogue sysadmin that was apparently able to access user data with ease a short time ago.
It might not be as easy as a textbox to search all of Gmail but your gmail data store appears to be wide open to a fairly large number of google employees.
It might not be as easy as a textbox to search all of Gmail but your gmail data store appears to be wide open to a fairly large number of google employees.
and who can subpoena your private communications.
When self hosting, you can make sure that deleted email has actually been deleted. You have control over how long logs are kept. You have control over whether or not to use encrypted filesystems.
It is much easier for one over-broad subpoena or search warrant to reveal your private data if it's hosted on Google than if it's hosted on your own server. If everyone keeps their own data on their own machines, then they would need to subpoena or get a search warrant for each individual person, rather than a broad one attempting to fish for information.
Furthermore, you can fight a subpoena. Do you trust Google to fight a subpoena on your behalf? How would they even know whether or not they should; how would they be able to tell if the subpoena is reasonable or not?
Furthermore, you can fight a subpoena. Do you trust Google to fight a subpoena on your behalf? How would they even know whether or not they should; how would they be able to tell if the subpoena is reasonable or not?
It really isn't that difficult. Except for spam; that one's really a kicker, and is the reason I finally switched to utilizing Google.
5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers.
It's more likely that someone will break into your server than Google's, isn't it?
A thing I learnt while running my own server was that all you needed to be a victim of automated attacks was to have an IP address.
It's more likely that someone will break into your server than Google's, isn't it?
A thing I learnt while running my own server was that all you needed to be a victim of automated attacks was to have an IP address.
Indeed, however if you're running your own server(s) then firewalls/monitoring/IDS/etc... need to be part of your typical setup anyhow. I wouldn't suggest someone who doesn't admin their own servers to get a server for running mail on, but if you manage/secure/backup servers for other stuff, mail is pretty easy to do.
I self-host my mail too, because I've been doing it for years and I really like having absolute control over what ends up in my Inbox.
True, it is probably easier for someone to break into my Linode than a Google server. However I think it's probably even easier for someone to break into my Google account. The surface area of a Google account is huge nowadays..
True, it is probably easier for someone to break into my Linode than a Google server. However I think it's probably even easier for someone to break into my Google account. The surface area of a Google account is huge nowadays..
automated attacks are easier to prevent, whereas dedicated attacks are harder, and google are much more likely to be the victim of a dedicated attack
Google also has a whole team of people whose only job is to stop attacks.
One of the main benefits of self hosting is the MTA logs. When self hosting, you know if the message has got as far as the recipients mail server, and you know if the recipients server has attempted to deliver mail to you. You also have ultimate control over the spam filtering, which I find very important.
> 1. I'm a control freak and a privacy freak. I don't trust any third party with my email. I want to know how things work under the hood. And if I want to make a change, I don't want to have to depend on any third party to do it.
Email should be considered public. Unless you're using encryption it's sent in plaintext and could easily be stored on any server it goes through. While it may be harder for the gov to get access to it a clever hacker or employee can still get it.
> 5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers.
Security by obscurity is not security at all.
Email should be considered public. Unless you're using encryption it's sent in plaintext and could easily be stored on any server it goes through. While it may be harder for the gov to get access to it a clever hacker or employee can still get it.
> 5. Stealth. It's much less likely that someone will try to break into my server than into Google's servers.
Security by obscurity is not security at all.
#4 Google Apps lets you require SSL.
My biggest problem when I self-hosted my mail is that when my server did something strange, I was losing Emails being sent to me.
Startups should spend energy on thngs that matter, not email.
I don't personally host my own email, but I can see it from the perspective of data control. If you use Google Apps for example, your email exists on their servers. I personally don't mind that, but others may not be so welcoming. Also if you want a more detailed email setup with regards to routing and filters, it may be difficult / costly in finding a provider.
I have to agree there is no such a need when you just started. Just go over to Google Apps and its done. Unless your service is build around or require email such as Posterous.
i've hosted my own e-mail for over 10 years and provide imap hosting to my customers. my main reason for doing it is having control over my own data, backups, and logs. my customers use it because they don't need an exchange server (my servers do caldav for calendar sharing) and don't trust google.
i do complex server-side filtering with procmail to keep my inbox clean (so all of my devices polling my mailbox will only alert me when something important comes through), automatically archive all email in an "allmail" backup folder, and do things like rewrite e-mail headers for certain conditions.
i do complex server-side filtering with procmail to keep my inbox clean (so all of my devices polling my mailbox will only alert me when something important comes through), automatically archive all email in an "allmail" backup folder, and do things like rewrite e-mail headers for certain conditions.
One possible reason is that Google can be a potential competitor, buyer or in an event which leaking email information to Google might jeopardize company's growth.
I'm surprised Slicehost is not present. Perhaps is it included in Rackspace?
Yes. I give my justifications for doing so in this commit: https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/commit/b00aba5d641021...
Should I keep them separate?
Should I keep them separate?
Please split them out.
What many people here are looking for is a snapshot of the choices a group of smart people have made : Going to rackspace.com is a whole different choice than heading over to slicehost.com.
What many people here are looking for is a snapshot of the choices a group of smart people have made : Going to rackspace.com is a whole different choice than heading over to slicehost.com.
Makes sense. I'll do that after I'm done with the meeting I'm in now.
Edit: Changed. However, the number of companies with A records in netblocks that are owned by "Slicehost" is pretty small. Perhaps Rackspace has been working on changing the names on the Slicehost netblocks?
Edit: Changed. However, the number of companies with A records in netblocks that are owned by "Slicehost" is pretty small. Perhaps Rackspace has been working on changing the names on the Slicehost netblocks?
No: http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=173.203.218.200?showDetail...
That's embed.ly - they're at Slicehost, but you still have them at Rackspace even after this change. Your script might be confused because the /24 is a reassigned child of Rackspace's /16.
I've parsed WHOIS in the past and the corner cases make a very solid argument for just doing it by hand. IP ownership issues, which you've already seen with Linode, make it almost exclusively a wet code problem.
There's a few nagging questions with the list from a casual skim, too, one of them being octopart.com - 64.71.142.178 is part of a reassigned /28 out of a Hurricane /18, which means Octopart likely hosts themselves. I have doubts you get a /28 from Hurricane with their shared hosting, but their sales page does list a static address (singular). Shrug.
That's embed.ly - they're at Slicehost, but you still have them at Rackspace even after this change. Your script might be confused because the /24 is a reassigned child of Rackspace's /16.
I've parsed WHOIS in the past and the corner cases make a very solid argument for just doing it by hand. IP ownership issues, which you've already seen with Linode, make it almost exclusively a wet code problem.
There's a few nagging questions with the list from a casual skim, too, one of them being octopart.com - 64.71.142.178 is part of a reassigned /28 out of a Hurricane /18, which means Octopart likely hosts themselves. I have doubts you get a /28 from Hurricane with their shared hosting, but their sales page does list a static address (singular). Shrug.
Most of the mistakes were due to my script using Team Cymru's IP to ASN mapping service (http://www.team-cymru.org/Services/ip-to-asn.html) thanks for your tip on using ARIN's Whois service. Looks like I've got more accurate results with them.
Yeah, you'll get announcing datacenters out of that, but for IP ownership, you need to check WHOIS. ARIN WHOIS is only going to be ARIN regions (the Americas) - you want RIPE for Europe, APNIC for Asia/Australia, and so on.
IHMO, yes.
I was wondering if anybody who uses Slicehost would elaborate on the advantages of Slicehost over Linode?
At the surface, it would seem that Linode offers more bang for your buck (almost twice as much) and outdoes Slice in the performance benchmarks.
Thoughts?
At the surface, it would seem that Linode offers more bang for your buck (almost twice as much) and outdoes Slice in the performance benchmarks.
Thoughts?
Slicehost is more friendly to inexperienced sys admins in terms of docs, etc.
But you can use all the Slicehost docs while you setup your Linode box, which is what I do :)
Linode also has StackScripts, which are pre-configured user-contributed setups for your VPS, so setting up a LAMP server is really easy.
Linode also has StackScripts, which are pre-configured user-contributed setups for your VPS, so setting up a LAMP server is really easy.
Linode has http://library.linode.com/ too.
I moved away from Slicehost due to frequent performance problems, which I found were related to disk thoroughput. This was at the STL data center. It was driving me nuts until I figured out it wasn't due to something going on in my own system. I had a spare Linde which was relatively trouble free, so I moved the main server to Linode and it has been so much better. Currently it has 2-3 times the activity as the server doing the same job had on slicehost with no performance problems, ever. AND it is cheaper than Slicehost.
Slicehost is simpler, Linode is more feature-rich.
i started using slicehost a while before i knew of linode. haven't switched due to not having the time to make the switch.
Perhaps. Heroku clients seem to be included in the amazon group based on the SSL cert.
Loopt is self hosted? Is that actually cost effective? I can understand a company like justin.tv being self hosted, but loopt makes less sense to me.
We're not 100% Microsoft. Probably 80% though.
We do it for security and privacy reasons. It matters less now, but for getting early carrier deals it was key, and now those agreements still bind us.
I use Amazon EC2 personally and would love to use it for more at Loopt, but can't.
We do it for security and privacy reasons. It matters less now, but for getting early carrier deals it was key, and now those agreements still bind us.
I use Amazon EC2 personally and would love to use it for more at Loopt, but can't.
As far as I know, Loopt is a 100% Microsoft shop. When they started, large scale hosted Windows subletting wasn't wide spread.
It still isn't if you want to be using the latest and greatest. Even Amazon only offer Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. We're using the R2 editions of both.
I've been really curious about this - how do you like it? I've got a couple of Win2k8 cloud servers at Rackspace right now, but I'm entertaining other options.
Is this only pre-acquisition companies?
Where's reddit? ;)
FWIW:
Web Host: EC2 (Amazon)
Email Host: Self hosted
DNS Host: Akamai
Registrar: Corporation Service Company
SSL Issuer: None
Certificate Type: None
Where's reddit? ;)
FWIW:
Web Host: EC2 (Amazon)
Email Host: Self hosted
DNS Host: Akamai
Registrar: Corporation Service Company
SSL Issuer: None
Certificate Type: None
> Is this only pre-acquisition companies?
Yes, it's a "List of active Y Combinator startups that haven't exited yet."
https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/blob/master/ycombinat...
Yes, it's a "List of active Y Combinator startups that haven't exited yet."
https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/blob/master/ycombinat...
"Corporation Service Company" has to be one of the most generic names ever.
I love that despite all the Firesheep business, about half of the companies on that list don't even own an SSL certificate. :-(
This is pretty cool Joel! Small nitpick - Zerigo is spelled incorrectly as "Zeroigo".
Google Apps uses Go Daddy for domain registration. Would that be why there are similar number of Google Email users and Go Daddy Registrars?
I’m surprised that no–one is using Linode.
I think it's very telling that something like 60% of YC companies have a SSL certificate...means they are most likely processing some financial transactions, so they charge their users directly
it's also interesting that so many are using the hurricane electric host...never even heard of them before
it's also interesting that so many are using the hurricane electric host...never even heard of them before
> it's also interesting that so many are using the hurricane electric host...never even heard of them before
I'm fairly sure Linode's West coast datacenter is in a Hurricane Electric facility so imagine those are simply Linode customers.
I'm fairly sure Linode's West coast datacenter is in a Hurricane Electric facility so imagine those are simply Linode customers.
HE is a pretty nice colo facility and backbone; not many people use them for hosting directly, but instead for colo/dedicated servers. Other hosts using their colo facility may be listed as HE. They're also one of the more well known proponents of IPv6, offering free IPv6 tunnel brokerage services, so if you need to support IPv6 or would like an IPv6 address block, they can help you out.
what is the catch with google as email hosting? we use rackspace, it seems nobody is using rackspace for email. What is the criteria in choosing email hosting?
Google Apps email is free and easy. The paranoid will not use it, because Google can read your email, possibly with good reason.
I don't see any prgmr.com hosting. I've seen it mentioned quite a few times in when people were looking for hosting.
prgmr will appear has Hurricane Electric ash thats who I believe provide all their IP space.
Missing are data stores. Web store isn't the same thing. I'd like to see the percentage that use S3.
i am very surprised that linode is not in the chart for webhosting section! something must be wrong
Surprised to see none of them using Route 53. Suspect that won't be the case in a year's time.
Surprised how few of these I knew, considering I read HN pretty regularly
I am surprised to see no heroku.
Look at the SSL column for *.heroku.com. They are all listed as using AWS for web hosting.
best charts ever
would have been even better if the "language decisions" would also be included - what programming language each startup has
Great to see godaddy successfully disrupting the ripoff ssl certificate market.
So basically Godaddy DNS is reliable but slow, DNSMadeEasy is relatively fast but had some uptime troubles in December, and Dynect (Dyn Inc) is fast + super reliable.
As for pricing:
- Godaddy DNS is free (I think?)
- DNSMadeEasy runs about $2-5/month (max of 10 million queries/month)
- Dynect SMB runs between $30-95/month depending on what you need (max of 1.8 million queries/month)