I’ve been writing a bit about Reclaim Cloud on this blog over the past month in preparation for this: the launching of the open, public beta for Reclaim Hosting’s new cloud hosting service! It’s really exciting to share this news, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit I’m a bit surprised how quickly everything came together from the point we realized it was possible in late April to rolling it out publicly today.
What is it? Reclaim Cloud is a container-based hosting solution that allows folks to create custom technology stacks in everything from PHP to Ruby to node.js to Go —not to mention the possibility to load and run just about any Docker container freely available on the web. What’s more, we have a growing collection of one-click installers for a wide range of applications.
So, in short, it’s everything we have not been able to provide in terms of hosting a wide variety of technologies and tools beyond the LAMP stack. What’s more, the infrastructure allows the scaling of computing and storage resources seamlessly. A watershed moment for Reclaim and an important move to ensure we can help our community make sense of the ongoing shift in the hosting landscape.
How can you get help? Throughout the free, open beta period this month we’ll be handling all support through our community forums where you’ll find useful guides, focused video tutorials (like those featured above), and the ability to request help via forum topics.
Where do I sign-up? You can read more and sign-up for the free beta period on our website at http://reclaim.cloud
So, reclaim your sense of edtech exploration and jump on the next shuttle to Cloud City!
Even after reading your various posts, I am still trying to get my head around all this and where this leaves plain old Reclaim Hosting? Just a dumb question, if there is Reclaim Cloud, why would I use Reclaim Hosting? Clearly I am going to have dig a bit deeper into this. Feels like we have gone beyond my ‘low down model, used by a little old lady just once a week to blog about …‘
Apologies Jim, I really should have just watched Tim’s introductory video. That makes more sense now.
Hi Aaron,
No apology needed, I did not really make that clear, but you bring up a good point, There may be some confusion around that point so worth spelling out. The LAMP stack which powers Domain of One’s own and our shared hosting offerings is not going anywhere. Applications like WordPress, Omeka, Scalar, etc. are still our bread and butter, and there is really no comparison in pricing between shared hosting and the Cloud. What would cost $30 a year to run WordPress on shared hosting would cost $10-$15 a month in the Cloud. That has everything to do with the fact that Reclaim Cloud is geared towards performant PHP applications (ton a traffic and need to scale seamlessly). The other opportunities that Reclaim Cloud open up that we are so excited about is all the apps that do not run in a LAMP stack cleanly are now things we can help people host. We spent too many years saying no and sorry to a whole generation of web applications that run on node.js, Ruby, and other environments that are difficult, if not impossible, to do cleanly in cPanel.
The other thing is Docker containers become a possibility, which effectively provide custom environments for apps that are ready-made, which means we can now host a wide range of niche projects with one of two clicks. It’s really a paradigm shift for hosting and server infrastructure that has been happening for a decade now, and we are finally seeing that trickle down to more independent hosting services like ours, that means it is mainstreaming more and more. It’s exciting stuff, and while not still entirely in focus, we really wanted to expand our possibilities if for nothing else because it is forcing us to learn so much!
This is exactly what I’ve been looking for!! Will we be able to switch to Reclaim Cloud on our current plan?
Brian,
That’s excellent to hear! Test it out and see if it works for you, and then we can convert accounts or keep both, etc. as you see what works. I think for PHP apps like Omeka and WordPress you’ll get more value from shared hosting, while a range of applications that do not run in the cPanel environment would make a lot of sense in Reclaim Cloud. And it’s worth noting it is not an either/or, you can have a Cloud and shared hosting account without issue.