Last Updated on November 30, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla
Before starting to use any hosting account for a Ruby on Rails project, check the versions they are offering.
I have a number of sites with Westhost. I’ve been with them for a number of years and the service has always been great, even for the cheap hosting plans. However, all of those sites were Joomla except for one WordPress site.
I wanted to convert one site to a Ruby on Rails project. I went into my Westhost preferred Cpanel hosting dashboard. Cpanel has a nice little ‘Ruby on Rails’ icon that is supposed to allow you to set up a Ruby on Rails project. I was having some trouble getting things running and decided to check the versions. ….
and… I did a Rails -v and Ruby -v and found that my plan was running Ruby 1.89 and Rails 2.x.. It was obvious that the problem was an old platform for both Ruby and Rails. I checked in with Westhost and they said that I could not manually upgrade the Ruby or Rails versions but would have to upgrade.
I decided to take an alternative solution since I’m migrating one application at this time. I went with DigitalOcean’s cheapest plan at $5/month (at least I believe that will be the cost). They offer a rails ready solution.
This isn’t meant to be a slam on Westhost. The point is that their low end hosting is not adequate for even half serious Ruby on Rails development.