Greetings!

Great questions, and thank you for taking the time to ask them. Our managed database offering is only relevant to people who specifically desire it over running their own database server. However, each of our servers (droplets) are provisioned with full root access. This means you can install anything and everything that you desire, and manage it to your heart’s content. You can install MySQL, Django, Nginx, Apache, PostreSQL, anything you want.

The only key that you need to remember is this: While we provide root access to those servers, not only is what you do and how you do it up to you, but so is knowing how to do that and troubleshooting any issues that occur inside of your server. I want to stress this, because with freedom comes responsibility, and I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that we’re going to provide you with a method of setting all of this up that is as simple and reliable as what WebFaction has done.

At WebFaction, as with services like them, all of their services are managed. This means that they cannot afford to allow you to crash MySQL on the server - that server is shared with other customers. With us, you can, and you will need to be the one to fix it if that happens. Your software is shared with no one, it is all dedicated to you. For our customers, this is a dream come true, it is exactly what they want and need. Sometimes, though, someone comes along and realizes that it isn’t for them. That is okay. It’s only a bad thing if I’ve mislead you, so I don’t want to do that :)

Jarland