I've used both Dreamhost and MediaTemple for hosting rails apps. I would recommend neither for anything serious.
I still use Dreamhost to host some non-critical stuff and very low traffic site (like my blog that nobody reads), store backups, and host my SVN repository, because it is so cheap and they give you an enormous amount of space and bandwidth. If you want a very cheap Dreamhost account, sign up with promo code SIDVISCOSITY and choose the L1 plan and 1-year prepay. This code gives you $97 off, which comes out to about $25 for the whole year (I profit nothing from this).
MediaTemple's grid server sounded great, but we had a similar 24-hour+ crisis once that made me look elsewhere. Also, they lock down their servers so much, you can't really run anything other than the standard RoR stack without jumping through hoops and pulling teeth. See previous blog posts with MediaTemple gripes: http://blog.wamily.com/articles/tag/mediatemple
The ultimate solution for hosting (a Rails app) is just get your own VPS from a reliable provider. I recommend RimuHosting (http://rimuhosting.com), and I am running two Ubuntu VPS's there. When we switched from MediaTemple to Rimu, I measured a 50x increase in speed in multiple areas of my app. For those who don't know, a VPS your own virtual server. You truly get your own OS, your own database server, with root access and everything, but it's on shared hardware so its far cheaper than a dedicated box. The MicroVPS2 plan at Rimu is $30/mth ... thats what I recommend for a starter Rails hosting setup. Rimu does a very good job helping you get set up initially, but you will need some Linux admin skills to really roll with it. This is good stuff to know though, so now is a good time to learn. I'm happy to answer YC'ers questions if you email me.
If you sign up for Rimu, please tell them that wamily.com sent you.
I still use Dreamhost to host some non-critical stuff and very low traffic site (like my blog that nobody reads), store backups, and host my SVN repository, because it is so cheap and they give you an enormous amount of space and bandwidth. If you want a very cheap Dreamhost account, sign up with promo code SIDVISCOSITY and choose the L1 plan and 1-year prepay. This code gives you $97 off, which comes out to about $25 for the whole year (I profit nothing from this).
MediaTemple's grid server sounded great, but we had a similar 24-hour+ crisis once that made me look elsewhere. Also, they lock down their servers so much, you can't really run anything other than the standard RoR stack without jumping through hoops and pulling teeth. See previous blog posts with MediaTemple gripes: http://blog.wamily.com/articles/tag/mediatemple
The ultimate solution for hosting (a Rails app) is just get your own VPS from a reliable provider. I recommend RimuHosting (http://rimuhosting.com), and I am running two Ubuntu VPS's there. When we switched from MediaTemple to Rimu, I measured a 50x increase in speed in multiple areas of my app. For those who don't know, a VPS your own virtual server. You truly get your own OS, your own database server, with root access and everything, but it's on shared hardware so its far cheaper than a dedicated box. The MicroVPS2 plan at Rimu is $30/mth ... thats what I recommend for a starter Rails hosting setup. Rimu does a very good job helping you get set up initially, but you will need some Linux admin skills to really roll with it. This is good stuff to know though, so now is a good time to learn. I'm happy to answer YC'ers questions if you email me.
If you sign up for Rimu, please tell them that wamily.com sent you.