Rackspace Hosting Review: Why We Gave It Top Spot For Longevity
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Our Verdict: #1 for Longevity
Rackspace offers managed hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated server plans with datacenters around the globe. Their Rackspace cloud plans can be configured with OpenStack, AWS, and Microsoft Azure.
Click any of the links on this page to get the best prices on hosting at Rackspace.
Pros:
- Seven global datacenters
- Offers carbon-neutral hosting
- Offers non-hosting services like CRM and BI
Cons:
- Users report sub-optimal support
- Plans can be expensive
Rackspace customers have written more than 20 reviews on our site. They’ve received an average rating of 2.2 out of 5 stars with slightly higher scores for Quality and Features, and lower scores for Support and Value.
Is Rackspace the Best Host for Your Website?
Curious about something specific? Jump to our most popular sections:
- Expert review — Get the straight scoop from our expert, Katie Horne.
- Customer reviews — Read 20+ reviews by Rackspace customers.
- Hosting alternatives — Find the best alternatives to Rackspace.
If you are looking for high-end enterprise hosting– especially for web applications – Rackspace might be on your list of potential hosts.
But Rackspace has struggled over the last few years. And they now have fierce competition from other major hosts.
In this article, I’ll look at what Rackspace has to offer and how it stacks up to the competition.
Company Overview
Rackspace began as Cymitar Network Systems. It was founded in 1996 by Richard Yoo along with Dirk Elmehof, Pat Condon, Morris Miller, and Graham Weston. It took on the name Rackspace in 1998 with Yoo as CEO and went public ten years later.
They have a wide customer base serving many thousands of small businesses as well as large corporations. The company is based in San Antonio, Texas (some 200 miles west of Houston).
Rackspace concentrates on providing managed dedicated and cloud hosting and has built up an impressive brand reputation. They are a leading provider of expertise and managed services.
Dedicated hosting is offered for both Linux and Windows platforms, and provides both managed hosting and colocation.
Rackspace guarantees 100% network uptime. This commitment to “zero-downtime” is made possible, they claim, with advanced redundancy technology whereby if one network or provider fails, Rackspace will immediately scan for a replacement. The end result is designed to be no loss of uptime and continual service to its customers.
The success of Rackspace has seen them grow to a billion-dollar international company over the past decade, and many accolades have come along the way, including being selected for “Best Place to Work” awards in both the US and the UK.
Services
Currently, Rackspace’s product porfolio includes the following services.
Managed Hosting
Rackspace’s Managed Hosting service offers you a single-tenant environment complete with the IT services you need to keep everything online.
There are two levels of service: Managed and Intensive. They are meant to act as an IT department so that you don’t have to worry about your hardware. They all include the following:
24/7 support
100% Network Uptime guarantee
URL, port availability
Hardware monitoring
Managed firewall
VPN access
One-hour hardware replacement
OS patching
Bandwidth and backup performance utilization
Managed data backups and restores
On-demand support consultations.
Othere features are plan-specific or optional:
| Feature | Managed | Intensive |
|---|---|---|
| Guaranteed response times | No | Yes |
| Advanced performance and monitoring | No | Yes |
| Custom configuration trend performance | No | Yes |
| Server virus scanning | Optional | Yes |
| DDoS mitigation | Optional | Optional |
| Managed security services | Optional | Optional |
| Encrypted backups | Optional | Optional |
Managed Cloud
The Managed Cloud isn’t one option, but many options. Furthermore, you’re not locked into Rackspace’s cloud environments – you can mix and match with products offered by third-party cloud providers, too. You can choose any of the following cloud options:
Public Cloud: multi-tenant environment that offers you ad hoc scalability, which means you only pay for what you need
Private Cloud: single-tenant environment, either via a dedicated server or a virtualized environment
Hybrid Cloud: set up the environment that best fits your needs and choose from public clouds, private clouds, and/or traditional dedicated servers
Multi-Cloud: set up an environment that relies on clouds managed by multiple providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, and VMware.
Colocation
If you have existing hardware, you can set it up in one of Rackspace’s data centers and have Rackspace’s team secure and manage your physical servers.
Email Hosting
Rackspace also offers professional services, such as cloud migration and reliability engineering.
Want to receive email using an address whose domain name matches that of your website? Rackspace offers email hosting options that can help you get started with this. You can choose from Office 365, Exchange, or Rackspace’s proprietary email options. All come with the tools you need to access your inbox from multiple locations, ample storage, and (in some cases) productivity tools.
Other Services
Rackspace offers application-related services in the areas of business intelligence, customer relationship management, databases, and more. The company also offers professional services, such as cloud migration, reliability engineering, data-related services, DevOps, and support for security and compliance.
Interested in Rackspace?
Use our unique discount link to obtain the best deal possible.
RackSpace Reviews by Our Community
Overall Rating from 28 Reviews by RackSpace Customers
| Support | |
|---|---|
| Quality | |
| Features | |
| Value |
Most Helpful Reviews
Noel Turner nytix.com
Oct 04, 2018
Jeff Howland titanitllc.com
Sep 25, 2018
We decided we were going to partner with Rackspace for hosting. What a mistake. We were told we would get quotes back same day to get out our customers.
Quotes took 1-3 days to get back, we lost bids because we looked stupid because people were like, um you can’t even get a bid back in a timely manner and you want us to trust you hosting on mid-size applications! The first dedicated server we ordered to migrate an old distributed server environment was another disaster. They set us up on the wrong type of server first, lost our hard drive that we had delivered with images and then took a 6 day gap in answer support emails while we were trying to figure how to clean up all this mess.
Easily cost me $20,000–$30,000 and then they billed me for a total of 4 months and are trying to collect an additional $1800 on failing to deliver! This is what I get for trying to leave the AWS infrastructure, I’m sorry Jeff Bezos, I’ll never try and leave AWS again, don’t ever force me to deal with these fools again!
Johan Johansson jocan.com
May 27, 2018
Very overpriced compared to AWS Lightsail. Went from paying USD$380/mo to USD$15/mo, and the sites load significantly faster. A site that loaded in +12s in Emea/ANZ went to loading in less than 6s with no changes to code at all (an identical website).
While on Rackspace, our server was hacked because "you did not patch the kernel", but we were paying for managed hosting??? It turns out that managed hosting really just means the superficial stuff, but anything beyond that requires the customer to do. Rackspace is just a bad company now.
Customer Support
Excellent customer support is a key element of Rackspace’s web hosting and is backed up by a 5,000+ strong workforce.
Rackspace promises to only use high-quality bandwidth providers, underlining its stated intent to provide high-quality, reliable service without fail.
Excellent customer support is another key element of Rackspace’s web hosting offerings and is backed up in part by a 5,000+ strong workforce, many of which work on the customer care side of the business.
Its “Fanatical Experience” program includes offering support 24/7 x 365 by highly trained specialists.
In addition, Rackspace is known for achieving faster than average response times to customers’ queries, with unlimited technical support on the phone.
Customers also have access to a large knowledgebase on Rackspace’s website.
Infrastructure
Rackspace is one of an increasing number of hosting companies that promote themselves as environmentally aware. As such, they have established tree planting schemes throughout the US and the UK and also provide the option of carbon-neutral web hosting.
Rackspace has seven datacenters around the world:
Chicago, US
Dallas, US
Washington, DC, US
London, UK
Frankfurt, DE
Hong Kong
Sydney, AU.
They also have 38 RackConnect Global Locations around the world.
Alternatives to Rackspace
Rackspace offers a lot of good products, but that doesn’t mean the company is right for everyone. Here are some good alternatives you can look in to if Rackspace isn’t the best fit for your needs.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is another company offering managed dedicated servers. Like Rackspace, A2 Hosting offers solutions for complex use cases. However, A2 Hosting offers three dedicated server options from which you can choose, whereas Rackspace offers you a custom solution.
Liquid Web
Liquid Web offers a variety of premium, managed hosting solutions. Its dedicated servers are, like Rackspace’s Managed Hosting, single-tenant environments that are fully customizable. Liquid Web offers more package choices than A2 Hosting, but again, they aren’t custom options like Rackspace’s are.
WP Engine
If you are working with a WordPress site, one managed service provider you’ll want to consider is WP Engine.
The company focuses exclusively on WordPress sites, and rather than choosing a hosting type, you choose a plan based on your resource usage and traffic levels.
In addition to the managed hosting, you’ll be working with a team that knows WordPress backward and forward.
Interested in Rackspace?
Use our special discount link to obtain the best deal possible.
Should You Consider Rackspace?
Rackspace is a high-end hosting company with a long history. There are many other hosts in this niche that may serve you better, however. Read customer reviews to help make your decision.
f Rackspace isn’t right for your site, check out our guide to best web hosts to find an alternative provider. If you already know you need a dedicated hosting plan, read our best dedicated hosting providers page too.
Edited by Frank Moraes and Natalie Mootz.
Most Popular RackSpace Alternatives
After great 6 years of hosting with Rackspace, the home of "Fanatical Support" has become the home of fantastical support. Since the acquisition of Datapipe and all the bad policies that they have, Rackspace is now heading for trouble with terrible support, unreliable infrastructure and broken down communication lines. We are leaving.