Web hosting that allows background processes?

Question

I am thinking of starting a website, but for it to work, I need a ruby script constantly running in the background.

Can you recommend any web hosts that allow this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you have VPS or dedicated hosting then you can set up cronjob for this.
Heroku lets you run cron job as addon
HostingRails allows it.
EngineYard allows it too
I'm sure most others will do.

Answer 2

Any host which allows you to have crontab entries (use @reboot as the start time) should work unless your process specifically breaks their Terms of Service in some way.

Answer 3

not bluehost they kill long running processes, though I guess you could just have a cron job that restarts it every minute...

Answer 4

As mootinator said, any host which allows you to run cron jobs should allow it as long as your process isn't against their TOS. With a VPS or dedicated server you can pretty much run whatever you want, but even most decent shared hosts will allow you to run background processes as long as they're not too resource intensive.

For example, DreamHost allows you to run persistent background processes on their shared hosting so long as they aren't disruptive and don't involve IRC, bittorrent, or streaming media. Otherwise, you need to switch to a VPS plan.