Rails Hosting Survey 2009
The results of the Rails Hosting Survey for 2009 are out. Thanks to Planet Argon for putting it together!
With about 1250 respondents, it has some pretty interesting results.
Here are the things that stood out to me:
- 63% use Git vs. 36% use Subversion. I knew Git was growing fast, but I didn’t expect 2:1 over SVN.
- 75% use Capistrano. About 25 percentage points higher than I would have guessed.
- 97% use either MySQL or PostgreSQL. I’m not surprised how popular they are, I’m surprised that all other database make up only 3%.
- 68% Mac, 25% Linux, 7% Windows. I know “everyone” uses Mac, but I’m surprised Windows is that low.
- 37% use Hoptoad to manage application exceptions. I had never heard of it and will have to check it out.
- 68% don’t use uptime monitoring tools. 60% don’t use any process monitoring tools. Is that a reflection of improved reliability and ISP/Hosts providing the monitoring? Or is it just hope-for-the-best developers who will wait to hear from users that the site is down? (Of which I am frequently guilty.)
- 25% use Nginx for their webserver. That’s a lot considering only 2% of all websites uses Nginx. It’s an interesting trend to keep an eye on.
- And finally, WOW some people are paying a lot for their hosting. More than $50K/month?!?! I’m dying to know who that person is.
I only wish the results had included more information about the survey sample. How did they get their sample? Independent or corporate developers? What size companies? What country and/or U.S. state are they from? If 20 developers taking the survey are all from the same company then it will skew the results in favor of that companies preferences. If they are all from San Francisco, then it says more about SF than about Rails preferences worldwide.
But it is an interesting and informative snapshot nonetheless.
