Hi everyone,

We've just launched ServerPilot, a new control panel for PHP developers managing cloud servers for their apps.

https://serverpilot.io

ServerPilot makes it easy to manage all of your Ubuntu servers and PHP apps from one place, keep your servers secure, and give everyone on your team the ability to manage servers and apps.

We got a lot of interest and feedback from Linode users about our beta. We still love feedback now that we're out of beta. If you give us a try, don't hesitate to send us your suggestions and feature requests.

Very sincerely, thanks!

$468 per YEAR per SERVER and I get what for that?

Please explain what that type of money buys me that I'm obviously missing now without it???

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

Yeah, you're gonna have to do something better than "This is secure and easy" if you want to charge $250 over what it costs to get cPanel on a VPS.

I've already got something similar, it's called web faction

For any startup like ours, it's definitely the case that we haven't implemented all of the features that we envision. There are then hard choices about pricing at an early stage.

For our current users, price hasn't been the major issue. They are unhappy with their current solutions which cost them approximately the same amount in money and a lot more in terms of time and risk. Clearly, though, you didn't see the advantages. Either you're not unhappy with your current solutions or you don't see much additional value in ours.

On that note, it would help me a lot if you could answer some questions for me.

• What server management software do you currently use?
• Regardless of price, would you ever use our software? If so, what do you think it's worth to you now?
• What awesome features would make it worth $40/month to you?

Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate it.

What I was getting at is your site, especially your home page, isn't an effective sales pitch.

It's easy to find the cost, what's way way way harder is to find why I should spend that type of money on your service.

You say "Your team loves ServerPilot's simplicity. You love it's efficiency and security", why? what does that even mean?

Who are these "security experts" such that I don't have to be one?

Your whole front page is like that, lots of buzzwords, no clear cut examples of what your service does for me (and is therefore worth the price you charge).

You should be telling me what you do for me, not just layer after layer of adword buzz.

Who's your top three competitors, why are you (specifically) better?

How do you save me time and money?

Why would I be foolish NOT to buy your service?

Why is your 14 day free trial offer NOT at the top of your front page? (it's not even ON the front page).

Except for your $39/month/server I see no mention of how I pay (paypal, credit card, lumps of gold, what?), is it cheaper paid per year, how do I cancel, etc.

You may indeed have a great product at a great price, but you do little to nothing to convince me of that fact.

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

I'm with vonskippy on this. I can't tell what your service really is or does.
- Is it a control panel that I install on my Linode VPS?
- Is it some sort of management proxy that runs on your servers but manages my VPS?
- Is it a pre-configured Linode config that is cloned for us?

It says it uses nginx & Apache, and supports PHP 5.4.
- Are nginx & Apache requirements on my VPS or your server?
- Is PHP 5.4 the only version of PHP it supports? Does it support PHP 5.3? (I have some code that still uses a few commands that were deprecated in 5.4)
- I have some client apps that call a few python scripts, is python allowed?

Your site mentions security, but doesn't tell me if it's just ServerPilot configuring SeLinux or a chroot jail or iptables on my VPS ... or if they actually are offering managed server security. Or is your control panel just 'differently secured'?

You know what's missing? A "What ServerPilot Does For You" & a "How It Works" page.

vonskippy hit the nail on the head: your website doesn't tell us what your product actually is or does.

I signed up for a trial and then turned around because I don't know who you are. Your site wants me to install software on my servers, which is scary to give someone else control. Why should I trust your site?

Thanks for all of this feedback. We've now added the following pages:

How ServerPilot Works
ServerPilot Security
Founding Team

As for PHP versions, we don't have plans to support PHP 5.3 but we will be supporting 5.5 very soon. You'll be able to run apps with different PHP versions (that is, some 5.4 and some 5.5) on the same server.

We still have more work to do on the website. Suggestions about what needs to be clearer are extremely welcome.

Huge thanks!

By not supporting 5.3 you'll be losing customers. The latest Ubuntu LTS (12.04) has PHP 5.3.10 and last LTS (10.04) has 5.3.2. Since Ubuntu's the most popular distro on Linode I'd expect the majority of those Ubuntu deployments to be one of the LTS releases.

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Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

The warnings kicked up by deprecated items are an annoyance, but the stuff that no longer works in 5.4 will affect a lot of software (including popular open source PHP packages).

Here's what no longer works in 5.4:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration5 ... atible.php

Here's what was deprecated in PHP 5.3 (which will stop working in one of the next releases):
http://php.net/manual/en/migration53.deprecated.php

We will be migrating from CentOS 5 to Ubuntu 12.04 within the next few months. There are a few nice features in 5.4 so we may take a look at upgrading, though we only have a few sites that use anything that will stop working in 5.4. If we had a lot of sites that would be affected I wouldn't dream of moving to 5.4 unless there was a seriously compelling reason.

If you're migrating to 12.04 stick with the distro supplied 5.3.10 and save yourself a headache. Otherwise you'll have to either 1) Get it from a 3rd party ppa/source or 2) Compile it yourself.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

Thanks obs. I was hoping to take advantage of the 'Traits' and 'Closures' features of 5.4. I know compiling PHP isn't rocket science, though I can screw up most things in life without really trying. I was hoping PHP 5.4 would be an easy upgrade considering 13.04 has it.

I'm also torn about which version of Python to use. There's a lot of code examples in 2.x so 2.7.x (or whatever the latest version will be when I set up the new VPS) seems like a good choice because I'm not very familiar with Python yet. But version 3.x is the future of Python and I don't have a commitment to 2.x (my test code isn't significant and I'm not engrained with the ways of 2.x).

What about people who don't use or like Ubuntu? There are other popular distros that function quite well on servers. Since they all run basically the same software, and since it appears to be a web-based app (I couldn't tell for sure), I don't imagine it would be that hard to support them? I'd rather develop my own web app that I can easily migrate to a new system, or use something like WebMin or CPanel that's more portable.

Also, where's the source code? If I'm going to spend a lot of money on something I actually need to install to use (especially where security is crucial), I'd rather review the code first to make sure it's trustworthy -- especially since a lot of free (as in $0 free) software I use has source code publicly available. Being F\OSS does not mean you can't make a profit. Even the GPL does not require that you provide the source code until you actually provide the software (read it carefully and you'll see this).

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Kris the Piki Geeker

Piki,
Though I agree with you wholeheartedly about the other distros, I read an article last winter about services companies that fail because they wait to launch until they can offer too many services or options to their potential clients. It advised getting something to market that was focused on a certain segment of your target market and then expand with new services, features, support, etc as soon as you can. Perhaps that's the plan for ServerPilot.

I'm wondering how the 'Free Trial' works. If SP is like most control panels it buries itself into your server like a tick and the only way to get it out is to start from scratch.
- what is the process when someone decides SP isn't for them (either via the free trial or after a few months of being a customer)?
- does SP have to be installed on a barebones VPS?
- what happens if a VPS already has another control panel installed or is already serving up websites?


I'm also a bit confused at SP's choice of calling websites 'Apps'. There's a whole industry built around 'apps', and that is the mobile industry. There are web applications, but a website isn't necessarily a web application. I realize SP is trying to get a toehold in the market by setting themselves apart from their competition, but purposefully using nomenclature that is different from the existing industry standard just for the sake of being different doesn't make sense to me.

If SP's target market are VPS owners who don't want to be server admins they should probably stick with the terms that those individuals are familiar with. The fact that SP has a page to answer the question 'What Are Apps?' speaks for itself.


MSJ