Launch Day!

Posted On April 29, 2019

It’s here and we made it!

It’s launch day and I’m happy to say we’re going to launch on our revised launch date. Here are some of the things you should know:

Shared web hosting is ready and it’s fantastic.

You’re on our list so you probably already have applications and websites hosted on WebFaction. So you’re pretty familiar with connecting a domain, app, and website which is exactly what you do here.

You’re not going to find an installer for every framework we plan on supporting (not yet, but they’re coming!). What you’ll see are 3 major application types:

  • Static
  • PHP-FPM with Apache
  • Proxy ports

Static apps use Nginx to serve JS/CSS/HTML and other static files.

If you are bringing over WordPress or other PHP applications you can use the PHP-FPM installer then transfer your data and databases.

The proxy ports app type will allow you to bring over most of your Python, Node, and Ruby apps with minor modifications such as port assignments, filesystem paths, and anything else that might be specific to your site’s local deployment.

Aug 2019 Update: WordPress, Django, and more are now available as 1-click installs in our panel! 💥

Our support team is fantastic (if I do say so myself). Sean, John, and I all worked on support at WebFaction for years and we’ve built every piece of the platform. Our help center is online at https://help.opalstack.com with our initial documentation, and our support team is available via the help widget which appears at the bottom-right corner of the page throughout the service.

Let’s talk about the servers.

They’re super fast. We tweeted the specs a couple of weeks ago. The servers are in good locations with excellent network connections. We decided to go with SSDs only in our web servers to make sure your websites are as fast as they can be.

We’re launching with servers in 4 locations with a few more coming online in the next 2 weeks. Here’s where we are now:

  • San Francisco, CA
  • Dallas, TX
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Frankfurt, Germany
  • Singapore, Singapore

Here are some of the other possible locations:

  • London, UK
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Sydney, Australia

If you are interested in the UK, Netherlands, or Australia please let us know.

What’s on the machines?

  • CentOS 7 as the operating system
  • Python 2.7, 3.4, and 3.6
  • Ruby 2.6.2
  • PHP 7.3
  • Perl 5.16
  • MariaDB 10.3
  • PostgreSQL 11.2

Pricing

When you landed on our page you weren’t looking for “shared hosting” you were looking for somewhere you could deploy your websites, applications, and make them available to the world without having to manage every single detail. 

You probably can manage the host OS, security configuration, and website setup but why spend your time doing those things when you could be developing and running your website?

We don’t think of ourselves as a shared host. We think of ourselves as infrastructure for people without an infrastructure team. Let us handle all of the OS management, server configuration, and security updates while you focus on the things you need to do.

In order to host your site you need memory to run your applications so the shared plan comes with 1GB of RAM. You need storage space for your files, databases, and content so the shared plan comes with 100GB of SSD storage. We’ve also included 1TB/month of data transfer.

Our managed shared web hosting plan which includes all of the above is going to cost $15/month or $150/year (two months free woohoo!). The plan includes a two-week free trial, so you can take your time and look around before you commit.

What’s not ready?

We expect to deliver some of these things in the next few weeks. We’ll keep you updated on Twitter with our progress.

  • That awesome email system we mentioned isn’t quite ready so it won’t be available today. We know how important email is and we won’t ship an email system that isn’t rock solid. That means there’s no sendmail binary on servers now so you’ll need to use an external SMTP server to send email from our web servers. Now live!
  • Managed DNS is also not ready so it won’t be available today. Now live!
  • API documentation.
  • Private IP addresses
  • Cloud (managed VPS) servers 
  • Dedicated servers

So what are you waiting for?

Go check your inbox, grab your invite, and come join in — we can’t wait to hear from you!