Can I have root access or sudo for my web site or server?

Yes!  For Unmanaged VPSs and Unmanaged Dedicated servers we'll immediately provide you with root access and you can do as you please.

However, for SmartVPSs, which is our Managed hosting option and comprises the majority of our customer service types, the answer to that is yes, you can have root access with caveats.

The key thing to know is that our SmartVPSs are Managed Servers and as such are configured to work with our monitoring scripts, automated SSL certificate installation, security services, and our Dashboard.  These scripts ensure your web services are up, are always tuned for high performance, that free SSL certificates are automatically installed, that the permissions allow you to get work done easily and securely, that our clients and our support staff are automatically notified if something is wrong, and that it all works seamlessly with our Dashboard.

On a SmartVPS we will provide you with root or sudo access with these caveats:

• Do not change httpd or virtual host configurations except through our dashboard. If you need to make changes that are not available via the dashboard please email those requests to support@brownrice.com and we can make those changes for you (if they won’t break our automated systems.)
• Do not change MySQL configurations anywhere other than via phpMyAdmin through our dashboard.
• Do not add, modify, or remove user accounts anywhere but via our dashboard.
• Do not change permissions schemes or groups.
• Do not add services that conflict with default Apache, MySQL, and Sendmail ports.   For example installing and running a Node.js service on a SmartVPS will conflict with Apache and cause one or the other to fail, which will in-turn alert us, which will make us realize that you've screwed things up....

And finally, if we provide you with root or sudo access and you break things - your things or our things or anything - we'll switch your account over to be an Unmanaged server.  And that's OK!  But with an Unmanaged server you'll need to install your own SSL certificates, fix things if they break, secure the server, and you won't have our sweet dashboard intregration to configure things.  But since you'll already have root access then you are clearly a command line ninja so you can do all of this from the command line yourself!