Very nice write-up (although the submitted title is a bit misleading).
Regarding the twitter post he referenced–as a happy Engine Yard customer, I can testify that they've never tried to sell me anything. The only thing we've had to pay extra for is space (because we're growing).
I do have other RoR apps running at Slicehost with passenger. They work great but there is definitely a noticeable performance difference compared to our EY app. I think most of this has to do with how Apache is configured (the first time you hit the app, it's very slow as Rails is being fired up).
As long as EY is keeping up with best practices, that works for me.
It's worth noting that Pratik wasn't throwing an attack at Engine Yard. Engine Yard is a special case amongst Rails hosts generally - it's expensive and for high end, heavy use.. you wouldn't expect EY to be doing the same sort of things mass market hosts would / should.
I think he was aiming more at shared / mass market hosts. For that level, it really would be next to crazy not to be using Passenger because it's so perfectly suited to that environment (and the other options are not).
Regarding the twitter post he referenced–as a happy Engine Yard customer, I can testify that they've never tried to sell me anything. The only thing we've had to pay extra for is space (because we're growing).
I do have other RoR apps running at Slicehost with passenger. They work great but there is definitely a noticeable performance difference compared to our EY app. I think most of this has to do with how Apache is configured (the first time you hit the app, it's very slow as Rails is being fired up).
As long as EY is keeping up with best practices, that works for me.