Update! Not long after writing this post – Aptana announced they are killing their cloud hosting service.

I just finished having a few drinks with the recruiting boys at ProfyleTracker so please forgive any loftiness within this post.

A year and a half ago I raved about Aptana Cloud,  an easy to use cloud server hosting provider with really nice code editor. I believe in my post  I said  something like the clouds opened and light shined down upon me – and that was completely true 1.5 years ago. Unfortunately Aptana Cloud never really progressed in the direction I expected – I was hoping for lower costs, more operating system choices and a faster overall network, none of these dreams manifested. Instead I am still sitting paying $24.95 a month for a Solaris based cloud server with 256mb of ram.

About a month ago I decided to give  RackSpace Cloud a try. I have used and loved RackSpace many years ago for larger managed servers, and when they launched a cheap cloud hosting package ($10 a month for 256mb of ram) I couldn’t resist.  The process of setting up servers at RackSpace cloud is super simple – giving you a slew of different OS choices and full root access. RackSpace also offers Cloud Files which, like Amazon S3, gives you super cheap hosting of files that are distributed across their network. Because of the price, I opted for the 512mb account at $24.00 – which at the same price of Aptana is ultimately twice as fast.

Top top it off RackSpace Cloud server manager is  web-based (or via the iPhone App) opposed to Aptana that requires you to use AptanaStudio, an IDE based on Eclipse.

PS, This post is the first entry on the new RackSpace server.
PSS, I hate my blog’s theme and really need to either design a new one or find a killer one.