# Rails Hosting in the UK

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [February 9, 2007, 7:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066 "2007-02-09T19:48:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 18\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 7:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/1 "2007-02-09T19:48:17Z")

</div>

Hi

I have a project to host (production level - mid level traffic) that  
has a predominantly UK audience. Currently I have a media temple grid  
unit, but it’s performing badly here in the UK (extra ping time etc).

Can anyone recommend any rails hosts that have datacenters in the  
UK ?

cheers

weepy

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 2:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/2 "2007-02-10T02:06:24Z")

</div>

Feel free to ping our site [www.speedyrails.com](http://www.speedyrails.com), it’s not on UK but if  
ping time is good for you then you’re welcome 😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 7:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/3 "2007-02-10T07:29:43Z")

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On Feb 9, 10:47 am, “weepy” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I have a project to host (production level - mid level traffic) that  
> has a predominantly UK audience. Currently I have a media temple grid  
> unit, but it’s performing badly here in the UK (extra ping time etc).
> 
> Can anyone recommend any rails hosts that have datacenters in the  
> UK ?

This probably won’t help with your timeframe, but we’re getting so  
much  
interest from the UK we’ve decided to pursue a cluster in or around  
London.

The C&W facility @ Swindon is delicious. 🙂

We’re working hard and would like to begin service around 90 days from  
now.

–  
– Tom M.  
– CTO, Engine Y.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 9:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/4 "2007-02-11T09:55:44Z")

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I never heard Swindon described as ‘around London’ before now. Most  
Londoners think the journey from Heathrow to Wapping is a bit much.

It’s not a big country and the pipes we have are pretty big. However  
the cost of physical space and staff is still vastly cheaper in the  
north of the country than the south. You might want to consider the  
sheds in Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Nottingham, and  
possibly even over the Irish Sea in Dublin. I can often get better  
speeds to Ireland than to London.

Unless of course part of your pitch is to show customers the flashing  
lights in which case you’d be better off in Docklands. Then they can  
just get on the Tube to it.

NeilW

On 10 Feb, 06:29, “removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/5 "2007-02-11T17:14:27Z")

</div>

🙂

Sorry for the bad locality reference!

I seem to remember it was a 20 minute drive from London, but perhaps  
it was longer…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 1:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/6 "2007-02-11T13:56:13Z")

</div>

Manchester is a viable option also, Ez, this is where I will be  
hosting my upcoming service. Also, it’s only 45 minutes from me so  
I’ll be able to do more hands on work with it if I have problems.

Jamie

On Feb 10, 6:29 am, “removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 12:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/7 "2007-02-12T12:05:45Z")

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Hi Weepy,  
I’ve been looking around for Rails hosting solutions in Ireland/UK the  
last couple of weeks and there doesn’t appear to be many options over  
here.

I’ve found that probably the best route to go is to get a VPS and  
configure it to your needs. It’s more work and if you’re not  
interested in getting involved in the sys admin side of things then it  
may not be your cup of tea. Shared hosting is an absolute no-no for  
Rails.

People on an Irish Ruby discussion group recommended http://  
[rimuhosting.com/](http://rimuhosting.com/) who have servers in the London area.

See [http://groups.google.ie/group/ruby\_ireland/browse\_thread/thread/](http://groups.google.ie/group/ruby_ireland/browse_thread/thread/)  
4cdf17ce2be050bd?hl=en  
A few other companies are recommended.

I have a VPS with [http://www.xenplanet.com/](http://www.xenplanet.com/) since last week. They’re  
an Irish based crowd who are very good value with very helpful and  
prompt support. They offer a pre-configured Rails OS image with  
Apache/FastCGI but I took a plain Debian install and have setup  
Apache2.2/Mongrel running on a 128 meg VPS and it’s working nicely.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Niall M.  
[http://www.4L.ie/](http://www.4L.ie/)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 5:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/8 "2007-02-12T17:49:33Z")

</div>

Shared hosting can be a yes-yes solution if it’s correctly managed 😉  
and your site does not have a lot of traffic.

Our shared service at [speedyrails.com](http://speedyrails.com) is performing great, but the  
secret is that we don’t oversell or overload our servers, we just have  
around 24 mongrel instances per server and this works great. Of  
course, as any shared service, one site can eat all the resources and  
affect other customers, but this is not a problem of Rails, and we do  
our best to avoid this using Monit.

Anyway, as Niall said, a VPS can also be a great solution if you like  
and know about linux admin. In this case, I can also recommend  
RimuHostig, in my beginnings, before creating [SpeedyRails.com](http://SpeedyRails.com) I used a  
RimuHosting VPS (and still have it), their support is simply great.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 6:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/9 "2007-02-12T18:33:38Z")

</div>

Shared hosting can be a yes-yes solution if it’s correctly managed 😉  
and your site does not have a lot of traffic.

Our shared service at [speedyrails.com](http://speedyrails.com) is performing great, but the  
secret is that we don’t oversell or overload our servers, we just have  
around 24 mongrel instances per server and this works great. Of  
course, as any shared service, one site can eat all the resources and  
affect other customers, but this is not a problem of Rails, and we do  
our best to avoid this using Monit.

Anyway, as Niall said, a VPS can also be a great solution if you like  
and know about linux admin. In this case, I can also recommend  
RimuHostig, in my beginnings, before creating [SpeedyRails.com](http://SpeedyRails.com) I used a  
RimuHosting VPS (and still have it), their support is simply great.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 6:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/10 "2007-02-12T18:38:39Z")

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Hi, All

Referring to the procedure of site updating:

- close site and show pretty “under construction, updating site”  
message, so that users don’t get confused by half-updated site  
meanwhile migrations are being applied
- perform QA check
- open site

In order to minimize site downtime closing of site seems to be be to  
radical solution in reality to users.

There is an idea to keep site in state, where changes to DB aren  
deprecated during the update.  
During that time during the update this will be possible to do with  
less rush the QA check, apply migrations, update the next version of  
site.  
Then to switch document\_root of server (frontend+backends) to a new  
updated copy.

Now to return back to rails, and to the question =)

It’s logical to create a general solution on the ActiveRecord level  
that will not allow update, insert, delete.

At the same time controller should somehow know about this and render  
some pretty view with maintenance content.

Is this logic correct?  
How to correctly connect, i.e. how the model will let controller know  
that the maintenance is going on right now?

Maybe there should be some exception in model, and controller will be  
getting this kind of specific exception?

Best regards,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2007, 1:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/11 "2007-02-13T01:53:44Z")

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> **[RimuHosting - Linux/Xen VPS Hosting | Tomcat JSP Hosting | JBoss J2EE Hosting](https://rimuhosting.com/)**
>
> RimuHosting provide fast, reliable Linux VPS and dedicated servers. Their servers are a great fit for sites running on Java, Ruby on Rails or exotic setups like nodejs, django, Erlang or you name it.

seem to be coming up again and again. of course the london server is  
2x the price of the us version, but thats always going to be the case

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/12 "2007-02-13T03:12:58Z")

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Hi Niall, I truly understand you, I also had bad experiences with  
shared hosts before creating speedyrails 🙂 but I really think that  
shared hosting is not as bad if it’s well managed and not over over  
sold as unfortunately many hosting providers do. Of course, shared  
hosting is not good for everybody, if you have a low traffic site of  
simply a low budget project, going shared is not a bad decision is the  
service is good.

Thank you for your kind words!

Regards  
Maykel

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 6:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/13 "2007-02-12T18:51:41Z")

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Sorry didn’t mean to tar all shared Rails hosts with the same brush.  
Have just had some bad experiences with shared hosts and Rails.

Sounds like you’ve got a good solution at [speedyrails.com](http://speedyrails.com), best of luck  
with it.

Regards,

Niall M.  
[http://www.4L.ie/](http://www.4L.ie/)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 11:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/14 "2007-02-17T23:27:38Z")

</div>

> I have a project to host (production level - mid level traffic) that  
> has a predominantly UK audience. Currently I have a media temple grid  
> unit, but it’s performing badly here in the UK (extra ping time etc).
> 
> Can anyone recommend any rails hosts that have datacenters in the  
> UK ?

The people behind [WorkingWithRails.com](http://WorkingWithRails.com) do hosting. I know they host  
some pretty big companies so they are probably pretty reliable.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2009, 9:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/15 "2009-03-18T09:21:42Z")

</div>

groovy hosting for students [http://javaprovider.net](http://javaprovider.net) open cms works like  
a charm

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2007, 8:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/16 "2007-03-17T08:49:11Z")

</div>

Have you seen [http://hosting.media72.co.uk](http://hosting.media72.co.uk) they offer rails hosting and  
are based in the UK, might be work looking at.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2009, 9:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/17 "2009-03-20T09:50:12Z")

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Hi weepy,

> I have a project to host (production level - mid level traffic) that  
> has a predominantly UK audience. Currently I have a media temple grid  
> unit, but it’s performing badly here in the UK (extra ping time etc).

You are welcome to sign up for a free trial at [http://en.railscluster.nl](http://en.railscluster.nl)  
in the Netherlands. Response times from Reading, England average 500 ms  
for a full HTTP request. And since it’s free, there isn’t any risk  
involved.

–  
Roderick van Domburg  
[http://www.railscluster.nl](http://www.railscluster.nl)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/5f8ce5/32.png) [@weepy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weepy)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 11:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-hosting-in-the-uk/85066/18 "2009-03-26T23:22:59Z")

</div>

weepy wrote:

> Hi
> 
> I have a project to host (production level - mid level traffic) that  
> has a predominantly UK audience. Currently I have a media temple grid  
> unit, but it’s performing badly here in the UK (extra ping time etc).
> 
> Can anyone recommend any rails hosts that have datacenters in the  
> UK ?
> 
> cheers
> 
> weepy

I am surprised nobody mentions BrightBox. They are a large uk based  
player in hosting ruby on rails apps. I currently have several boxes  
running with them and I love their setup. They have a very easy  
deployment gem and fast mysql cluster.

Checkout a small writeup on  
[http://railsbookclub.com/hosting-ruby-on-rails-apps](http://railsbookclub.com/hosting-ruby-on-rails-apps) or visit brightbox  
plan’s directly [http://www.brightbox.co.uk/a/vcikd](http://www.brightbox.co.uk/a/vcikd)