I am a slicehost customer, and a programmer without much sysadmin experience. To me, the documentation and support community at slicehost is invaluable - something this article touches on but doesn't put as much importance into as raw performance. Of course, depending on your level of Linux admin experience, saving $12/mo. may be worth it to you.
right now, my system is not designed to be easy for people who don't have *NIX experience. (I do have some neat features for those who do, like pvgrub and console access)
I'm working on it, but yeah, if you need a easy control panel to quickly re-image your system or things like that, I don't yet have those things, and yeah, for some people, getting those things is unquestionably worth the price difference between my competitors and I.
But for people who do have more UNIX/Linux experience, I think my system has some advantages that I will be careful to keep as I try to make easier interfaces. I give you a rescue disk that lets you boot your vps even if you break your boot config. I give you a ssh public-key based out of band console and rebooter. I let you run whatever kernel you want (I have a few customers running NetBSD, and I have some experimental OpenSolaris domains)
really? i think with today's hardware/bandwidth prices, it's perfectly reasonable to setup a fairly busy site and not worry about revenue at all. If it only sets you back a few dollars a month, it might make sense for you to build something popular for the experience and the social capital.
It might only be $12 but it's also a 150% increase. I think when you're comparing apples and apples (as in two products that have roughly the same features-- not a Rolls Royce and moped even though they share a basic function) there are going to be very few situations where a 150% increase is justified.
I'm on Slicehost, with about a $100 a month bill. Given my technology needs, that is overpaying -- both for the number of servers I bought (I could consolidate to save) and the price per server.
And I just couldn't care less. That's like one night's worth of sales. I've (hopefully) got better things to do with my time than spending it preparing for a migration and inevitable breakage in the interests of saving myself an hour's salary a month.
