RackSpace Review

RackSpace is a Web host that specializes in corporate and cloud hosting, and they have been online since 1998. Based in San Antonio, Texas, RackSpace owns and operates eight different data centers. Most of them are also based in the US, but there are a few in the UK and one in China. RackSpace is a service provider that understands the value of versatility, and they show this by giving businesses many different opportunities to choose the hosting that is perfect for their business.

RackSpace Hosting Plan Features

The features you get are largely dependent upon the type of hosting you choose from RackSpace, but they offer solutions for corporate websites, e-commerce, media and streaming sites, and custom application support. You can also choose from cloud hosting, managed hosting and hybrid hosting, which puts you in control of many of the processes.

Overall, the features you get should be able to match just about any website perfectly. With their custom application support, you can easily make the hosting do exactly what you need. Unlike other hosts that offer standard features, RackSpace prefers to give you an API so you can use the servers and hosting the way you want. While this makes the hosting very technical, it is also very versatile.

They also offer servers with Windows and Linux OS, so you can easily use whatever applications you want within the server. You can also choose different server versions, like Debian, Fedora, Windows 2003 Server and so on.

RackSpace Hosting Plan Prices

RackSpace offers two main hosting types: cloud and managed. With cloud, there are three different services, and each one services a different purpose. Cloud Servers is for using and storing application and files in their services. Cloud Files is specifically to load and use files. Cloud Sites is for hosting your website.

• Cloud Servers is $0.015 per hour
• Cloud Files is $0.15 per GB, every month
• Cloud Sites is $149 a month

You can also choose managed hosting. Their cloud servers give you access to a server with 256MB of RAM, 10GB of storage and a Linux environment. Enhanced servers are dedicated hosts for big websites. Performance servers are the biggest servers, and they are for the biggest websites

• Cloud Server: $199 a month
• Enhanced 1: $769 a month
• Enhanced 2: $1,098 a month
• Performance 1: $1,220 a month
• Performance 2: Contact for price

Considering what you are getting with each hosting plan, all of the above prices are very fair. You can find more specific information about the plans on RackSpace.com.

RackSpace Customer Service

You are paying premium prices for hosting, so do you get premium customer service as well? The RackSpace staff is quite helpful, and since they are there to help manage your hosting and servers, they can help you every step of the way if something goes wrong. While a few individual reviews display distaste for the company’s technical support, most are very favorable of the polite staff and their ability to pinpoint errors in the server.

RackSpace Ease of Use

While getting a cloud server up and running, and going through the API to customize the service for your needs may not sound very easy, RackSpace is actually one of the fastest and easiest hosting companies to work with in this area. They help guide you with connecting to the cloud server, and the connection is very step-by-step, so you should not get lost.

RackSpace Overall

RackSpace is obviously not a host for small websites like with shared hosting, but in the cloud and managed hosting field, RackSpace is very good for businesses and large websites. Their features are vast and wide, and you can easily tell the servers to do whatever you want.

If control, versatile features and pricing and powerful hosting are what you are looking for, then RackSpace.com provides. However, you do need a lot of technical knowledge to make this host work out for you, so you may need to hire someone to help you out if you do not have the technical skill yourself to manage cloud hosting.