As shared hosting go, I think webfaction is second to none. They really manage to hit this sweet-spot between VPS and shared hosting, and you get the best of both worlds.<p>You get lots of stuff out of the box with an easy web-based interface[1], but if you really need some specific version or a package, you can do it too. Their support is fast and responsive and very helpful. They have servers in the US, Amsterdam and Singapore, and you can choose. You can even set up a fail-over server[2] quite easily.<p>I know I sound like a fanboy, but I truly like their service. Of course, for most of my stuff, I still use Linode/AWS, but can't recommend webfaction enough for shared hosting.<p>[1] e.g. you can choose the PHP version for your app from their web management console, as well as lots of predefined app templates (django, wordpress, RoR and more)<p>[2]<a href="http://blog.gingerlime.com/2012/webfaction-fail-over/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.gingerlime.com/2012/webfaction-fail-over/</a> - a blog post I wrote about it.
If anyone is looking for static file hosting, PHP or CGI, I strongly recommend NearlyFreeSpeech.net - I've been using them again recently and they're fantastic as ever (and incredibly cheap too, though less so if your site gets constant heavy traffic).
This is why I use Webfaction[1] for smaller projects. It's an excellent mix of command line and one-click Apache/nginx/DNS/email installers. I actually only found them because I noticed a few YC companies using their email servers.<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.webfaction.com/?affiliate=mbesto" rel="nofollow">http://www.webfaction.com/?affiliate=mbesto</a>
Shared hosting is hard. Been there, it sux; you have to keep everyone happy with multiple versions of everything. By the end of it, it will look like the primordial soup.
Whoever manages to do it and remain sane has my respect; shared hosting can still make quite a bit of money.<p>Personally I'd like to see stuff like Openshift[1] take off, maybe with a nice interface in front of it so it won't scare off "CPanel" users. It sounds like a nice compromise between shared hosting and "VPS".<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.openshift.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.openshift.com/</a>
As someone who worked for another German webhosting company (not mentioned in the article but more than a million customers), I can tell you that it's extremely hard to roll out new versions of typical software (PHP, Perl, MySQL) when you both want to keep your users on the latest (or a reasonably recent) version while not breaking your users' websites. And because there will always be customers unwilling or unable to switch to later versions, you end up running Perl 5.6, PHP3&4, Frontpage Server Extensions (yes, people still use that stuff) and MySQL 4.<p>That said, Uberspace is still small enough to take care of their users individually when it comes to support. They can keep their architecture simple (well, so does 1&1, but rumor has it that they have 100 people working in their data center only to replace broken parts in their shared webhosting system), and text-only configuration files and not fully automating everything is still feasible and doesn't hurt yet.<p>Scaling webhosting while keeping up good customer service is hard. That's why your experience with small hosters will often be better.
The wire transfer makes me think these guys are hosting auteurs or the like. They may have a small clientele that they cater to exclusively and personally.<p>As far as I can see, you really need VPS if you need that amount of flexibility. The only person you can count on to keep your stack up-to-date in the end is you. If you do it, you know what you did. All the host needs to do is make sure someone else's VM doesn't affect yours and bandwidth and power are taken care of.<p>Running a VPS is an order of magnitude simpler than managing individual software packages/libraries, conflicts and such per client and so you will generally get better service as a result anyway. "Here's a bucket. Do with it what you please (just nothing illegal or resource hogging)." Then you just have to worry about the time you spend on keeping your VPS up to date.<p>VPS packages are reaching the same cost that shared hosts had a little while back and if AWS isn't an option for whatever reason, it's the better pick.<p>Edit: I should mention that I use two different hosts. One reseller and one VPS. The reseller on shared is for users who need the nice admin interface for everything, "one-click" installs, DB admin GUI etc... and the VPS for personal stuff and a couple of clients.
Do they have an english page? For some weird reason Chrome doesn't want to translate their page (<a href="http://uberspace.de/" rel="nofollow">http://uberspace.de/</a>)<p>Edit: Nope. <a href="https://twitter.com/ubernauten/status/331007821808279553" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/ubernauten/status/331007821808279553</a>
I <3 Uberspace. The service is great, the people are awesome. Jonas visited us at our Ruby Usergroup Booth on the Sigint last year and we talked about problems he had supporting ruby on the machines. Great guy!
Why not wordpress.com which would scale to better than almost anything else?<p>For anything more involved, get dedicated servers starting from 15 Euro/month from Hetzner or OVH.
They could have at least supported Sofortüberweisung. Apparently what they want is "echte, klassische Überweisung" (real, classic money transfer). Schade.