Top OpenSim Hosts of 2009

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The choice of OpenSim hosting companies has grown a bit but is still very limited, due to the fact that the OpenSim platform has only become stable — and grids hyperlinked — at the start of this year.

If you’re looking for a free alternative to a paid hosting services, see  Free Land in OpenSim and OpenSim deployment gets easier.

If you want to outsource this function and save yourself time and worry, here are today’s top options, in no particular order:

ReactionGrid

Best for: Schools, businesses. ReactionGrid has a very strong educational community on it, and also offers a selection of tools and other products to assist groups in setting up their grids. The folks behind ReactionGrid work hard to maintain good relationships with their customers, and on ensuring the stability of the public and private grids they operate. Their customers rave about the service they get, and the ReactionGrid executives can usually be found on the grid itself, answering questions, solving problems, and running events.

Prices: Start at $25 per region (16 acres, average use) with a $25 setup fee.

Customers: ReactionGrid customers include big names like Intel, Microsoft, and the American Cancer Society.

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SimHost

Best for: Businesses and groups looking for the best performance. This is a project by Adam Frisby, one of the core developers of OpenSim and a vice president of OSGrid — however, the regions can be hosted on any open grid, or run as independent grids. Frisby has a great technical reputation with OpenSim, which is reflected in the high performance of their hosting. Customers who need more customization, can use  Frisby’s company, DeepThink, for high-end custom development work.

Prices: Start at $45per region, with maximum of 40 simultaneous visitors.

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PioneerX Estates

Best for: Individuals, small businesses. Simon Guttridge, who runs PioneerX, is based in the UK, but also has U.S.-based servers available. He gets glowing reviews from his customers. His servers were hit hard last summer by a hacker who wiped out hundreds of thousands of websites, and hundreds of OpenSim regions, but has since recovered from that disaster.

Prices: Start at $16 per region. Free single-acre lots also available for homesteaders and small businesses.

Customers: Pineapple Pictures, dozens of individuals.

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Media Dialog

Best for: Businesses in Germany

Prices: Start at $33 a month per region, $390 setup fee.

Customers: No referenceable customers yet.

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Grid4Us

Best for: Individuals, small businesses in Germany and vicinity.

Prices: Start at approximately $50 a month per region, $130 setup fee, on the Grid4Us grid.

Customers: Folk Cafe, though they have since moved back to Second Life.

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WorldSimTerra

Best for: Individuals, schools, small businesses, especially for those working in Spanish or Portueguese.

Prices: Start at $25 per region on the WorldSimTerra grid.

Customers: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, CentralSL, WebEducativa

Segarra Estates

Best for: Groups looking for private grids of at least four regions each.

Prices: Start at $135 per four-region grid, with a $200 setup fee. High-use grids and hypergrid connections cost extra.

DeepThink

Best for: Businesses needing custom programming or design, or for large-scale events.

Prices: Based on scope of project.

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Sim-OnDemand

Best for: Organizations needing a region for a short period of time as the region is hosted on Amazon’s cloud server.

Prices: Starting at $7 per region for a region used less than 10 hours a month, running around $100 a month for a region of average use.

Customers: Referenceable customers not available.

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IBM Lotus Sametime 3D

Best for: Large organizations needing integration with other Lotus products and corporate LDAP directories.

Prices: Starting at $50,000 for four regions.

Customers: Manpower, Northeastern University, Northcentral Technical College, and Raytheon.

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Did we miss anybody? Please let us know in the comments below.

Maria Korolov
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