For the past few years, I’d been leveraging a VPS provider based in Germany, with hosting in France. It was a big step up from my previous shared hosting provider, and let me take control of various aspects of my website and mail server setup:
- Configuring (and hardening) the server setup, instead of relying on the hosting provider’s “OK for most people’s needs” setup
- Leveraging my own properly signed SSL certificates, instead of needing to pay the hosting provider extra for the privilege
- IPv6 support (sort of… more on that later)
At first, the move to the (old) VPS provider was a great improvement. They were even willing to provide me an IPv6 address, and responses to support tickets were pretty timely.
Then, about a year ago, signs that the honeymoon was over started appearing. Repeated IPv6 connectivity issues were initially met with quick responses, but kept occurring. Things got worse when the founder of the company got a full-time job at a (well-known) start-up. To cut a long story short, here’s a screenshot of my current support ticket queue:
Yes, you read that right, those tickets are from July 2014, and have not been responded to. Needless to say, if you want to keep someone’s business, don’t ignore support tickets for eight months.
Enter stage left: Mythic Beasts
So I’ve moved to Mythic Beasts as my VPS provider. Several reasons compelled me:
- They natively support IPv6. And they’re serious about.
- They support causes I can get behind, such as the RaspberryPi and CycleStreets.
- They let me pick whichever OS I wanted (so I went for FreeBSD)
- Reverse DNS management for both IPv4 and IPv6
- Their support (so far) has been excellent. Even on a Sunday, when I’m sure they had better things to do.
I’m quite excited about this move, and hope my new home will serve me well (get it?).