Review - Webfaction shared hosting

[hzr]

tl;dr this is probably the only shared hosting that i haven't despised. it's been years and this is the longest i have ever stayed with a shared host.

great for hosting some small sites, etc. i mostly dump friends' ghost and wordpress and etc installs on it.

webfaction.com

here is a list of pros! i heard the internet likes lists.

• users can run persistent processes, own nginx/apache/puma/flask/etc
• users can request a port to be reverse-proxied, automatically
• SNI is supported by default, for free
• dedicated IPv6 address by default for every subdomain, automatically
• actually uses sane versions of libs/languages, like php 5.5.10
• in-house, bespoke panel
• this one actually knows what things like SRV, TXT, SPF, AAAA are unlike cPanel
• can run rails, python/django/flask/whatever without hating yourself (seriously try doing rails on cPanel)
• notifications instead of terrible throttling:
  ● if you have an absurdly long inefficient slow mysql query, the query itself will be killed after a while and the system will automatically open a ticket with you containing details like the full query, run time after kill, etc that you can reply + acknowledge
  ● same thing for persistent excessive cpu and memory abuse, comes with process details and stuff
  
• dns uses proper nameservers, not the standard ns1/ns2/maybe even on the same ip
• mail is supported by a cluster too, not the standard 'mx runs on whatever the cpanel box is'
• can use own apache config, can use own php.ini, can use own nginx config, etc
• very good postgresql support. better than mysql.
• mongodb, redis support
• can host in singapore for the same price
• one click installer doesn't suck like softaculous/fantastico, it actually installs UP TO DATE versions, with build scripts and all that (like wget wp.latest; generate-config-php; etc)
• have a terrible, forgotten wordpress install that gets compromised? its virtualhost gets disabled and doesn't affect your other sites, and you get an automatic notification to resolve it.
• each individual site can run as a separate user account; you can share with ACLs or groups
• there is no terrible remotens crap like cPanel; you can just point an A+AAAA record over no matter what nameservers you use
• your server neighbours are generally developers, not "SUPER AFFILIATE SPAM BLOG WORDPRESS AUTO POST"

now here's a list of cons

• adding new domains and subdomains is downright awful, though you only have to do it once for a site -- you have to take 3 steps to add it.
  1. add a domain (example.com and www.example.com are separately added, this is the A/AAAA records)
  2. add a "application" (this is a folder/webroot/whatever)
  3. add a "website" (this is the actual virtualhost or reverse-proxy)
• it's not cheap
• softlayer singapore does not have the best bandwidth locally
• dedicated ips are really expensive if you want non-SNI ssl
• i wish i could take a one-click full backup of all of my mysql db's and postgres db's and etc, but unfortunately not possible. this makes backing up a lot of separate db+users really annoying.
• your server neighbours are generally developers, not "SUPER AFFILIATE SPAM BLOG WORDPRESS AUTO POST"