Take off
Berlin, 2012-10-04 – We, Fortrabbit, are thrilled to announce general availability for our new PHP platform hosting services.
Which problem is solved?
All the stuff in the interwebs has to be hosted somewhere. Enterprise companies have their IT department to handle such things. In smaller structures such as agencies, startups and of course for lone freelancers this can be a major problem. Developers want a modern development environment, a reliable infrastructure, established standards and an up2date run-time. But they want to focus on their code and don't have the time or the skills to set it up and maintain everything themselves. Or they are simply fed up with mundane, repeating sysadmin tasks.
Who should care? – The new PHP Renaissance
There are only two type of programing languages: The ones nobody uses and the ones everybody complains about. PHP is definitely one of the last type. Nonetheless it is still the most popular for web related development - with more than 300 million websites using PHP. The community is pushing forward towards new and promising trends and technologies. Recent PHP upgrades brought mighty core improvements and allow PHP developers to go eye to eye with any other modern web development language. Our platform supports this new approach. We encourage - not enforce - to use modern technologies and possibilities. But we also take care about backward compatibility and do not discard established standards - just because we want to look modern.
Hey wait – you are not the first cloud hosting platform!
True. There are some others and even some more are coming. We see this as a proof of an actual need and believe that there is enough space for multiple PHP platforms. Developers have different skill levels and flavors – soon they will be able to choose the platform they like the most.
What about Features?
- Full featured free development environment
- Easy to use yet powerful web control panel
- Valuable performance metrics
- Instantly scalable without code adjustments
- Consumption based pricing model
- Read-write file system
- Access with Git, SSH and SFTP
- Native PHP composer integration
What's PaaS? – explained to Non-Geeks
When relatives ask us what we actually do here, we answer with an allegory: Where to rent an apartment? The cheapest offer is a plattenbau, 50 square meters, urine soaked elevator, paper thin walls. That's shared hosting. Most expensive is to hire a real estate broker to find the perfect mansion matching your needs (the private yacht harbor). That's managed hosting. And then there is also everything in between. PaaS offers you a wonderfully modern apartment - but you can change it’s size, the number of rooms, the equipment and even the location at any time. You pay an affordable price only for what you really use. That's Platform as a Service, that's what we do.
About Fortrabbit
Profile
We are a bootstrapped startup from Berlin, run by three co-founders Ulrich Kautz (technical lead), Oliver Stark (coder) & Frank Lämmer (concept/design). We develop technology based solutions and web services.
History
Our old hosting service included new technologies in a standardized environment. The new platform brings essential standards and even more new technologies to the cloud. All the websites we have been developed had to be hosted somewhere. In 2006 we put all them on a dedicated server. The unused webspace was filled up with our own projects. Some friends also asked for hosting. The next server was rented. This went on. In 2007 we decided to take all this more serious. We (Ulrich & Frank) founded • fortrabbit and bought some metal pizza boxes. To achieve consumption based pricing and scalable ressources we developed a highly virtualized infrastructure architecture for our stack. A little private cloud, secure and versatile. Our own control software MISH offered a nice web frontend for clients. We also integrated a complete billing solution (WebRechnung). But the MISH system had two problems: The great range of functions made it very complex, maintining the bare metal was a hassle. So by the end of 2011 we decided to make a cut: Take all of our experiences and realize a new system in the cloud. Now, only 10 months later, after a short private BETA period, the all new fortrabbit – PHP Platform launched.