For the startups it's particularly attractive, since money they spend on their own hardware is money wasted if they end up being acquired by a bigger company with it's own server farms. They also have the option to ramp up and down fairly quickly in case they get slashdotted.

I keep hearing really good things about A Small Orange. The prices on this page are per year.

[link]

They have no PostgreSQL. What's with the hating?

Though MySQL may have caught up.

Remind me of the particular reasons for the MySQL hate-on, again? A lot of things have changed in the most recent versions.

(also, noting that "hate-on" is an exaggeration for not-very-humorous effect -- but what particular features are you looking for from a switch to Postgresql?)

The specific issue I'd had with MySQL no longer exists--they have caught up on the stored procedure front, for example. At the last inspection the only thing is that I'd started to re-architect the systm in PostgreSQL and used some features that it had that MySQL didn't. It's not a real investment, since the rearchitecture is mostly paperware at this point.

I am left with a residual "Hmm?" when PostgreSQL is excluded, though. Just on principle.

Spoiler font leakage in Spoilers lite.

Seriously? I checked and I used the short-cutty "s" command instead of the other thing.

PostgreSQL is generally lacking from web hosts, in a similar fashion to Ruby. A majority of hosts are either LAMP or IIS with MS SQL server.

I checked and I used the short-cutty "s" command instead of the other thing.

When I went in there wasn't a shortcutty, because it was a whited out quote. The system then happily ate the closing t /font tag--I went in and put some spaces in after it. Needless to say the automatic tag closing code that was almost written many years ago now is high on the list of things to be taken out and shot against a wall when the Inquisition comes. Not only is it buggy, but it's philosophically flawed in that it edits the contents of the post and saves the edits to the database.

PostgreSQL is generally lacking from web hosts, in a similar fashion to Ruby

I haven't had much difficulty in general finding PostgreSQL. It strikes me as a mark of flexibility on the part of a web host. Even if I'm not using it, I like it to be there, just because I feel it speaks to there being techie room to grow in that environment. I've found Ruby less prevalent, but it's right there on my $6/month domain. Can't beat that with a stick!

It's only on my cheapo site where I don't care.

They're supposedly very responsive over there (they've even answered a couple of stupid questions from me). They might be willing to add it, if we asked.