The custom server and pre-configured Ruby-on-Rails server options offer customers far more flexibility in terms of features they require, coding preferences and budget, says the company in its most recent announcement.

The new virtual servers also come with a Ruby-on-Rails stack - which includes Ruby, Subversion, MySQL, SQLite, ImageMagick, several Ruby Gems and Apache 2.2 - with the most common elements of a rails application already downloaded, installed and configured.

Customers can choose the operating system, power rating, disk space, RAM, control panel and the payment options they would prefer. Prices start from £9.95 per month.

"We are fast becoming one of the largest providers of virtual servers in the UK and the launch of two new packages only highlights how focused we are on continuing on that path," says Errol Vanderhorst, sales and marketing director at Easyspace. "Not content with already having competitive packages and low prices, we felt it was time to expand our offering - providing packages that fit most user requirements."

In May, Easyspace launched its Windows-based VPS offering to sit alongside its existing Linux VPS products.

Earlier this week, Easyspace reported it won Web Host Directory's "No.1 Virtual Servers Provider" award for the third month running. The company says this is the fourth award given to Easyspace Server products in the recent month, having initially been nominated "No. 1 Dedicated Server Provider" in May, followed by three consecutive monthly "No. 1 Virtual Server Provider" awards over July, August and September.

Founded in 1997, Easyspace says it was one of the UK's first domain registrars and web hosting providers and over the past decade has grown to become one of Europe's largest hosting companies, serving over 300,000 customers. Easyspace was purchased by the iomart Group in 2004, which also operates a managed hosting company by the same name, iomart (iomart.com).