Not too long ago a friend asked me for some input on a project he was going to be bidding on. He laid out how he was going to tackle it and was looking for someone to bounce ideas off of. He has one Ruby on Rails project under his belt, and wants to develop in it. Even though it may not be as comfortable as PHP, the framework does make a lot of things easier. Especially things that this project was probably going to need, like agility to change, fast development time and ease of iterative development.
Then he asked about hosting. His previous project was sitting happily on Media Temple’s grid server. However this project would require more gusto up front and potentially could need help in scaling things up. I suggested he look at Engine Yard. I’ve never personally had the pleasure of doing business with them, since all my projects have been with companies that already have their hosting structure in place. However I do know that they support the ruby community. They are paying to have some important projects developed and their hosting appears to be grade A all around. My brain is fuzzy on all the sources of anecdotes, but blog posts are probably the dominating influence. People have been in the same boat as my friend with this project and Engine Yard has delivered spectacular results. You don’t just get hosting, you also get brains to pick and experienced system administrators for a fraction of the price it would cost you to get them any other way.
Engine Yard has endeared me to them even more though. They have proven that they aren’t afraid to go the extra mile. Before my friend finished off his bid he called up Engine Yard to get some technical questions answered. He was impressed with the caliber of Vivek Sharma whom he spoke with on the phone. He was asked how he heard about them, word of mouth, and whom that person was, me. Vivek then took my name and I’m guessing googled it, found this blog, figured I was probably the same guy (there aren’t many Caleb Jaffa’s on the internet) and emailed me to thank me for the referring them. He also sent me a $50 iTunes gift certificate.
Even if I never see another dime from referring people to Engine Yard that’s okay. I believe that what I recommend to people comes back to reflect on me, and Engine Yard has proven to me that they are a quality organization.