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Rackspace alternative with same level of performance and support?

Posted by netstepinc, 06-20-2006, 03:40 PM
I've been dealing with Rackspace regarding a managed server, but they want $400/month. I was hoping for $200/month or so. Do you have any personal experience with a host that provides: 1) Super reliable mission critical managed server. 2) Phone support for emergencies. 3) Fast tech support. 4) Reasonable price.
Posted by PixelManual, 06-20-2006, 04:54 PM
Personally, I've used Cartika before. They pretty much are the equivalent to RS from my experience. Toll free number, great support, h-sphere for clustering, and InterNAP bandwidth. however, at some points they are more expensive than RS http://www.cartikahosting.com/Cartik...cated-Servers/ edit; Sorry, i just looked at your budget again. if this is so mission-critical, you might want to bring the big bucks to the table.
Posted by hamishrp, 06-20-2006, 05:02 PM
i have a large server with servint.com who are very very good. Completely managed service and really fast support. Don't be put off by their website, if you do some research on google and here you will see that they have an amazingly solid reputation. Hamish
Posted by layer0, 06-20-2006, 06:05 PM
They are managed to an extent but have never touted their service as 'fully managed', despite your claims. I personally am put off by the fact that they've had a 'new' site under construction for *years* now...when is that going to be released? I wouldn't call it amazingly solid. ServInt does *not* have a Rackspace style network by any means, despite what you may think, hamishrp. They've had their share of network downtime and it surely didn't please their customers to say the least. Not so long ago they had only one upstream and were down for the better part of the business day due to a fiber cut. Fun, no? Even though they supposedly have redundancy now, their network still fails and when it does the downtime is usually to the extent of 30 minutes if not longer.
Posted by netstepinc, 06-20-2006, 07:27 PM
Yes. I figure I need to step up my budget, but I want to be particular I'm getting the best bang for my buck.
Posted by netstepinc, 06-20-2006, 07:35 PM
Thank you for sharing the other side of the story. This is a deal breaker. I need something more RackSpace-ish.
Posted by RWH, 06-23-2006, 05:40 AM
Could you give us a little more information on what server specs are needed?
Posted by Shock Hosts, 06-23-2006, 06:36 AM
If you want reliability, RackSpace is the only way to go in my mind. But for good costs, LayeredTech is great.
Posted by Lpal-Patrick, 06-23-2006, 12:38 PM
liquidweb.com
Posted by h4wk, 06-24-2006, 05:43 PM
you can say that again. Servint is very good, i am currently with them.
Posted by Rasbelin, 07-02-2006, 05:49 PM
Well, I'd say that's an opinion very much fused by how RackSpace is generally praised here, while very few have ever actually used them. Now I don't say they're bad, but I think much of their reputation here is very much due to populism. As for what I'd consider premium hosters, Peer1 (yes, they do managed servers), Colo4Dallas and Carpathia Hosting are three names not to miss. Their costs are around the ones of RackSpace or abit lower or higher. However both are reliable corporate grade hosters. There's others too, but those two poped up into my mind.
Posted by Shock Hosts, 07-02-2006, 06:34 PM
Softlayer.com are meant to be VERY good.
Posted by dkitchen, 07-02-2006, 08:12 PM
Up your budget to $300 and you'll probably get something comparable, for $200 you aren't going to get far. Softlayer aren't a managed solutions provider, I really wish you'd stop making pointless posts, and stop breaking WHT rules. Dan
Posted by PixelManual, 07-02-2006, 08:25 PM
Josh tends to post about what he doesn't know about. That's a good point Rasbelin, very few have used RS and yet so many claim to love them and keep recommending them. I've never used them directly, but a friend has and to be honest, they really aren't fully managed for their pricing. Quite often they will not help you for 3rd party app. installs, optimization, etc. My definition of fully managed is that you never need root or superuser to get what you want done. And for how much they charge -- it's not worth it.
Posted by hitmeback, 07-03-2006, 01:28 AM
rackspace alternative => hostway.com Last edited by anon-e-mouse; 07-13-2006 at 07:57 AM.
Posted by hitmeback, 07-03-2006, 01:30 AM
by the way rack space alternative will not have reasonable price (as rackspace it self)
Posted by homer2, 07-03-2006, 08:54 AM
You got it in one hitmeback. If you want any quality product then that's always going to cost a bit more than a basic hosting solution. It's a trade off at the end of the day, of cost against service Those who want or need maximum support and minimum downtime will need to pay a little more, as it means having technical staff available to deal with the problems quickly. In my opinion RackSpace is worth paying that bit extra for.
Posted by alemcherry, 07-03-2006, 03:36 PM
Hostway is good, but I dont know if you can really compare it with rackspace. Verio is also good, but again it is also not cheap. Peer1 (Interland) can be cheaper than rs, but not quite as cheap as you would expect. I really cant recommend anything that cost half as much as rs and still provde the same support!
Posted by hitmeback, 07-04-2006, 12:23 AM
for good support price has to high , true ... but as i have mentioned before in one post that there price is high because of there huge advertising compaigns , they have got their ads on every big site which is even sightly related to hosting stuff ...... from sourceforge to wired , from tophosts to WHT .... they must be spending hugemoney on these things which they can reduce atleast to 60% ,if they want to ; and this will significantly effect their costs.
Posted by Techpriest, 07-04-2006, 04:22 PM
My friend runs a company called PhenomINET that would probably be able to do what your looking for. They are very service oriented just like rackspace, and i think they have better costs. Do a google search it should come up.
Posted by mrzippy, 07-04-2006, 05:59 PM
Actually, a lot of these "bigger" companies get free web hosting from rackspace in exchange for the advertising. Do you think webhostingtalk (these forums) puts the big "Powered By Rackspace" logo at the top and bottom of every webpage because they are simply nice? As far as finding something better then rackspace, we have used them for years and have not found a better solution for our clients who need "mission critical" managed hosting. Yes, they cost a lot. Yes, in this case you get what you pay for.
Posted by hitmeback, 07-05-2006, 12:11 AM
i never doubt it Last edited by hitmeback; 07-05-2006 at 12:18 AM.
Posted by sc0rpi0n, 07-13-2006, 05:33 AM
So after all these posts, what's the best alternative to rackspace? Of course, many hosts offer top notch services, but generally what's the most popular one after rackspace? (most of us know Pepsi stands after Cocacola right?)
Posted by Nature-Talk, 07-13-2006, 10:08 AM
Another report from the field... Personally, I'm really drawn by the Rackspace pitch. Paying for a quality host really does save you money. As example, my server is down right now (at another host, not RS), so I'm getting no work done this morning. If you add up those kind of time losses, and add them to the server fees, the cheaper hosts really aren't cheaper. But... I tried Rackspace for a month a few years ago. They gave me a control panel that required lots of Unix skills. Why would you give this kind of control panel to someone who is buying managed hosting?? I couldn't do simple things like create domains and email addresses. And the support tech they gave me couldn't keep the thing running either. True story. I will say the overall support response was excellent. The top support manager called me proactively repeatedly. She chased me, rather than me chasing her. Have never seen that anywhere else. Excellent effort on her part. They tried to give me another control panel, again going the extra mile, but it was experimental (as they indicated it would be) and it was just plain broken. A for effort, D for results. After a month of good faith effort by all, and just too many troubles, I requested a refund, which was given promptly with no quarrel or problems. That was about 3 years ago. Recently I decided to give them another try, but was put off by Rackspace's Used Car Lot style of turkish rug merchant secret price haggling sales system. To me, that style of selling communicates they are happy to gouge me if they can, and that's just not the kind of corporate culture I want to make my business dependant on. The best I can offer is that if you don't mind their sales philosophy, it might be worth a try to give them a try for a month, and see what happens. I don't have a list of alternatives, sorry. I'd be interested in any Liquidweb vs. Rackspace comparisons. Anybody used them both?
Posted by layer0, 07-13-2006, 10:23 AM
LiquidWeb doesn't have a fast ticket response time (it can take hours), however they will of course answer their phone 24x7 and resolve any issues mentioned there ASAP. Their network has been down in the past and they are by no means 100%. LiquidWeb is also much cheaper than Rackspace so I'd say that 'you get what you pay for' applies to this comparison. Rackspace does offer very good support and their network offers consistently great performance...Rackspace > LiquidWeb, if you are willing to spend the extra $$$.
Posted by doogypants, 07-13-2006, 10:27 AM
I've called them out on their sales tactics, and after some explanation, their methods make a lot more sense. The rep I was working with explained to me that they customize each server to fit your needs, and want to ensure the right solution is chosen from the beginning, rather than shoe-horning you into a pre-packaged configuration. Ensuring you are in the proper solution IS part of the "fanatical" support process, which is why you don't see pre-priced cookie cutter configurations like you see on the web sites of lower cost providers. Call me naieve, but I think this makes sense.
Posted by mripguru, 07-13-2006, 11:31 AM
It does, to a degree - but, they should at least have *some* guideline pricing available on their website so a prospective customer can see what the general price range is on a couple of sample configurations (low, medium and high end). Rackspace doesn't need to sell at that price; but it could be used more for the purpose of "talking points" for prospective customers. Though, on the flipside, this could be used against Rackspace and their "person-to-person" salesmanship tactics (and chances to sell servers). The problem with their model, that I see, is that once they've roped you into their sales cycle - it's rather hard to get out of it completely and predefined "sample" pricing would go a long way to reducing the need for person-to-person communication (and the fact that they pull up a live chat on EVERYONE is just annoying! ). I think that the way they run their sales organization is, on the whole, very respectable and commendable - but I also think at the same time that it's not being totally fair to the consumer that just wants to "price shop" for longer-term future needs. Just my $0.02 cents.
Posted by sprintserve, 07-15-2006, 08:04 PM
Generally, in the past we have used them all. Pretty much every single "fanatic" managed services. To be frank they all do the simple things very well. However when it comes to more advanced requests, they do tend to fail. One managed host we used a few years back repeatedly reply tickets on control panels by saying that they opened a ticket with the maker (and no follow up thereafter). Another told us when we asked about firewall solutions that our server is a whitebox and is thus not upgradable to their firewall solutions which is located at another location. The moral of the story is that they all have their strengths and shortcomings general. We actually mold our services based on those experiences. Lastly, the OP's pricing seems fairly unrealistic. $400 at Rackspace is not a bad deal. You may want to reconsider.

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