I do one of two things with sites running apps.. Either.

1. I get a cheap host with no support- that gives me the most access to the box (ssh, etc).
2. I have root to a server.

It sounds to me like you have an idea that dabbles in an inbetween. No root access but it seems like you would pay extra attention on friendliness to apps, perl ruby whatnot.

Yes I might consider something like this- to use it.

Now, I think I *am* your target audience. I have a piddly little html website- but I manage various client sites. Some are heavy backend stuff- so we get their own server. Some are not.. and we set them up on a shared hosting account. I am in a position to for example, create ten to 20 accounts with something more friendly.

I gotta tell ya- I don't give a h00t about price. My clients will pay it. And they *will* pay it. It can go up to $50 / $70 a month and it would be alright. Beyond that I would have some explaining to do, Lucy.
That's not the issue.

Money is not what will dictate if I will host web(sites/apps) with you. It's convenience.

What will you offer me that will make it more convenient for me to host a web app with you?

Let me list the things that most irk me about shared hosting and why I tend to just get my own damn server for a client...

• Missing dependencies
• Lack of access to system/error logs
• Funny system security hacks that isolate what system commands I have access to (like find, ls, imagemagick)
• Missing dependencies
• Missing perl modules
• Missing cpan shell access : missing dependencies and missing perl modules and missing perl modules

So- what can you offer? Here's what I want.

• Easy access to something like yum for installing stuff on my ~/bin
• Totally preconfigured cpan shell access, with the ability to have 5 accounts use the same libs
• vim
• X forwarding (hahaha... just kidding.. if you would i would smack you for trying to destroy your business.. gosh.. what would the bandwidth be???? Maybe in a few years as connections and cpus improve.. sigh... .)

So, there. I think there are other IT people like me out there who could send you a ton of clients- and I really don't think money is the issue. People like me are not interested in making a buck off hosting.

I want people like you to take the *expletive* when your server coughs up some blood because some cricket got inside the fan and your cpu's bricked.

I want people like you to make sure there's no funy business going on on some 'left open' port.

I hope you pursue this, it seems you will. For me, for one.. I would like to see you sum up your 'angle' a little bit better- down to one or two sentences.

You know, your angle- what it is you can offer that is not already being done- or you can do better etc.

I think what you'll do could be of service to some of the industry- as well as make you a buck.

If you have clients willing to pay that much, we could get moved to a VPS super fast and have a whole lot of control over it. It would still stay "midlevel" in the sense that it's not quite root access but it gives you enough to install your stuff and have a good deal of control over your account while letting the sysadmins and DBAs take care of anything that might go wrong with the system.

I can't honestly see charging a monk that much unless they're using every single resource offered with a bunch of support access piled on. I wouldn't have a problem making that much money though :-)

I'd like it to be accessible as possible, mostly techie people are going to be using this stuff, so I want to gear it towards those kinds of "clients" and make it a no BS set up for their stuff. Put together some sort of script that installs Catalyst or whatever their frame work desires and have a relatively universal way to access things via control panel but also have shell access.

Am I getting warmer or colder? What would help you out most?

meh.

I could take care of a few of those right off the bat.

I'm not sure about vim right away, and I'll have to look into yum. It may not be a problem right now, it might. We can sure see.

My summing up in one sentence:

The ability to deploy and run Catalyst apps with everything already set up.

Easy as uploading/checking out your SVN repo and chmodding dispatch.fcgi to 755 or whatever. I HATE having to do the same f*cking thing over and over for an application that I know works. Basically, I don't want users to have to worry about spending a lot of time deploying their app. That's what development is for. Eventually I'd like to buy that VPS like I said and get everything everyone wants, (ok, not everything, but the most prominent and feasible out of the suggestions) and DEFINITELY allow for beefy RAM and more FCGI processes.

The stable environment is what I'm shooting for now. No missing modules, no broken modules, no missing dependencies, a nice environment for Catalyst or Jifty or gag RoR with pretty much everything installed already that developers commonly use. Eventually, I'd like to write up some sort of control panel that's Catalyst/$whatever specific that allows you to search for plugins and such pertaining to that very framework.

Does that sum things up at all?

meh.

By way of comparison, DreamHost, offers FastCGI, unlimited domains, unlimited email, unlimited (I think) users (with shells), and more disk space than anyone but maybe a video host could use, for like $7/mo (if you buy a couple years up front). The only thing they don't offer is real reliability + a big enough chunk of RAM to run more than 2 FastCGI instances/apps at once (per user). If I could get a host that did what they do + was a bit more reliable and gave more than 100mb of RAM before killing stuff I'd gladly pay $50/mo.

Well, I'd most certainly be willing to get ahold of a dedicated server with some beefy RAM if I could get the money.

If I can get some people started on this, I can get some money in and put it towards that. That's basically the only thing holding this up. As far as reliability, are you talking hardware or meatware? I think I could recruit some monks with me who are interested in making some money and we'd have a pretty formidable support team.

Hardware would all depend on who is chosen for the dedicated/VPS.

meh.

++

But, dhoss, I'm not a potential customer, we have our servers.

Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man."

<joking>Well then get outta here!</joking> :-)

I appreciate the ++. Hopefully support from Perlmonks will help me get this off the ground and be successful.

meh.

Pg is already there :-)

meh.