Ethan's Comparison Of Private JVM Tomcat (Java) Hosts

* Hosts that can't tell you up front how much heap you get likely aren't particularly tuned into the private tomcat world?

About the Columns

Heap Size - If I could find it on their site. The sizes/prices posted are on their cheapest Private JVM account, most if not all providers will let you pay more for more. Note that Java defaults to a 64 MB heap for a reason. I don't think Tomcat can run in 32 MB. Beware the 32 MB heap.

Price - Monthly price. Several hosts offer deals for annual contracts, usually you end up with around 10% off, or a free month. I recommend checking out their site.

Datacenter - A web hosting provider that owns it's own datacenter is going to generally be at less risk of "bad" things happening outside their control, as they're not at the mercy of the financial/network/operational stability of an outside organization. (What happens when the colo facility goes bankrupt without warning as many did during the dot-bomb?) Some hosts are easy to determine, some are harder, others I couldn't determine for sure. If a traceroute, ip address whois, or their own site tells us they are colocating, then it's a "No". If their site says they have a datacenter and whois/traceroute backs it up, it's a "Yes".

Company Start - I just did a simple whois lookup on their domains and went with the "Creation Date". Anyone that's been around for 5 years or so should be pretty stable.

News, Changes, Articles, Etc.

2010-10-17 - Added JSP-Servlet.net. Still no Kattare, sorry..

2010-10-15 - Added Smedia, Java|Pipe, and JavaProvider.net. Got a request to add Kattare, (good idea Ben!) will do that next time.

2010-10-04 - Added HostIgnition and Cheap-JSP-Hosting.com. I was going to add Vision Web Hosting, but it ballooned when I realized they have like 20 different hosting "companies", at least 5 of which are java related. Maybe I'll add them tomorrow.

2010-10-01 - Added KGB Internet, WebAppCabaret, Eroute.Net, and JavaServletHosting.Com.

2010-09-28 - Added the "datacenter" column. Plugged in MMAWeb, DailyRazor, Oxxus, and Servlets.Net.

2010-09-28 - Good Article on "Why a private jvm?" by Jason A. Taylor, CTO, CWI Hosting here.

2010-09-27 - Put up the site, plugged in cwihosting.com, hostjava.net, mochahost.com, and rimuhosting.com.

About The Site

Full disclosure: My name is Ethan. I work at Kattare Internet Services. I'm a sysadmin by trade.

I was tasked with comparing hosts offering private instances of tomcat to see if Kattare was still competitive with their packages. After spending a few hours trying to figure it out from the usual "best host" sites, I gave up and started tracking the metrics I cared about on my yellow pad. There's lots of good info out there, but not what I needed. The private jvm scene is too specialized for the generic hosting rankings sites.

My research tracked the "get in the door" accounts. I was grabbing the cheapest account allowing a private jvm, as one specific question I was trying to answer at Kattare was "Can we offer a private jvm on our low end accounts?". A few days after putting all this on paper I realized what I had collected might save people some time, so I decided to throw it up here on the web. I'm a sysadmin/programmer not a graphical guy, so it's not pretty, but hopefully it'll still be helpful.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of features or a collection of every host's plans. For more details on account features and what larger plans these hosts offer, I highly recommend visiting their sites.

I think you'll find this to be 99% accurate (100% as of Sept 2010 when I put it up!) but if you see something that needs corrected drop me a line.

(C) Copyright 2010 Ethan @ jspjavaservlethosting.com - Feel free to use my stuff, but please don't steal my stuff.