2017 Rackspace Reviews: Our Expert Rating (4.1/5.0 Stars)
Almost two decades later, Rackspace has carved out a niche for themselves in the web hosting space. In fact, without intending a pun, they have racked up a sizable space where they host upwards of 500 billion page views yearly. Just last year, the company came under the ownership of private investors affiliated to Apollo Global Management. This was after years as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock exchange.
Thanks to their latest infrastructure and Web hosting solutions, Rackspace is now the preferred web hosting service for numerous enterprises in the Fortune 100 bracket and over 60% of the Super Bowl's advertising companies. Since 1998, Rackspace has been offering cloud hosting and dedicated server services.
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Private, Open and Hybrid Cloud are the three main types of cloud servers they offer and from each of them, you're guaranteed a decent choice of services including 15+ operating systems, image backups, great scalability, Raid 10, and so much more. Other web solutions they offer include e-commerce solutions, managed security services, email hosting, and managed databases.
Want to find out more on what is Rackspace hosting and if they are a right fit for you? Check out the rest of our review.
Ratings
- Reliability: 4.5/5.0
- Features: 4.5/5.0
- Pricing: 3.9/5.0
- Ease of Use: 3.9/5.0
- Performance: 4.5/5.0
Rackspace Hosting Review
As one of the largest, most reputable and reliable web hosts globally, Rackspace has a phenomenal offering in terms of service. Whether it’s their cloud hosting solutions or dedicated server plans or the other web solutions they offer, one thing you can be sure of is feature–rich services. Same also applies to their email hosting service which every Rackspace email hosting review agrees is among the best.
Excellent customer service is of great importance to the company and as you will see later in this review, it’s one of the major reasons for the raving Rackspace hosting reviews. Thanks to their latest hardware, the company has received great praise for their reliable speeds and guaranteed 100% load times.
Even though the pricing model is great, truth is they have some of the most expensive cloud server solutions and if you add that to the other paid services they offer, they really make for an expensive web host. And since they offer plenty of services, it’s also obvious it won’t be a piece of cake maneuvering through their platform and figuring things out.
Pros
Scalability
The scalability of Rackspace is incredibly easy as their web hosting services are always geared towards anticipating your growth plans. This comes from the information you gave during the sign-up process and the subsequent performance of your website.
Flexibility
Other than providing you different cloud hosting models to pick from, they also manage and support some of the domineering cloud platforms from Amazon Web Services to OpenStack to Microsoft Cloud/ Azure to VMWare and many others. All you have to is pick a model you like, pair it with your preferred cloud platform and they will carry out the rest for you.
Excellent Customer Support
Rackspace is so committed to excellent customer support that apart from referring to their support team as fanatic support, they have a fanatical jacket award where the staff member (racker) who provides the most outstanding customer service is bestowed a straight jacket. The humor behind the award has proven invaluable in creating a hard working team that continues to amass praise in many Rackspace reviews. Find out what some clients had to say about their fanatical support in this video:
Great Pricing Model
Although the plans are expensive, they offer you a way to mitigate how much you pay by paying as you go and using the calculator. The pay -as-you-go-model allows you to rent server resources based on what your needs are. The calculator model allows you to add individual features to your server then Rackspace formulates a tailor-made hosting plan for you using this data and charges you according to the features.
Research
The web host partnered with Trinity University (home of the brains behind Rackspace) to undertake research into programs that will benefit their community before embarking on any philanthropic action. This shows a care that goes far beyond mere corporate responsibility. They want homegrown solutions to the problems affecting their neighborhoods.
Community Responsibility
Rackspace has made concerted efforts to bring about an environment where education is valued by both families and educators and students are given the opportunity to reach their full potential by founding the Rackspace Foundation. Situated in the company's San Antonio community, Rackspace has been instrumental in bringing holistic support to seven San Antonio schools that they have adopted. With the help of their partners, they provide funding to programs that help in meeting the basic needs of students while also giving good education.
Cons
Plan Limitations
They do not offer a basic shared hosting plan. Although this is almost an industry standard, Rackspace has chosen to forgo it and instead offer cloud hosting solutions as well as dedicated server plans. You have the option to choose between two service levels: managed and intensive (for those who wish to manage the servers on their own).They also offer critical Application Services for those in need of enhanced services.
Relatively Expensive
Rackspace's pricing is not geared towards a start-up with limited resources. It is expensive by industry standards. Considering the fact that they do not offer a shared hosting plan, which would have mitigated the prices a little, it can be overwhelming to pay upwards of $80 dollars per month even for such great services.
Top Features Of Rackspace Hosting
Top Cloud Hosting & Dedicated Server Solutions
Presently, the company boasts well over 300,000 clients and one major reason for the solid reputation is their almost unmatched cloud hosting solutions and the recently added dedicated server solutions. Bear in mind that for each of these services, you have the option to choose between two service levels: managed and intensive.
What’s more, they offer both Windows- and Linux-based platforms. Some of the great features to expect from their dedicated server plans include:
- Dedicated VMWare environments
- 12TB l local SSD disk space, 3TB RAM/server, and a maximum of 72 Intel processor cores
- Dedicated SAN, NAS and DAS solutions
- Top Security through daily backups, monitoring, and dedicated hardware firewall
- Advanced managed SLA that promises 100% uptime guarantee.
For their cloud hosting platform, the company has dedicated two virtual CPUs to carry out the job as opposed to one like every other company does. There are also a number of add-on features you will be offered on top of your cloud hosting plan including isolated networking, improved geography instruments, new APIs and so much more.
Simple Sign Up
The process of signing up for Rackspace's services is very user-friendly. Take their e-commerce solution, for instance. It is a step by step processes where you will be asked who your current host is, what qualities are most important for your website, how much traffic and growth you expect, what is your role on the website and your preferred platform for your e-commerce store. If you seek their help, Rackspace’s group of experts will come up with a personalized offer based on your answers and proceed to help you set up your website.
Performance
Rackspace utilizes a global content delivery network (CDN) that increases the speed with which your website, video and audio, and images are uploaded. Rackspace's CDN can deliver your website and all (interactive, dynamic, static and streaming content) to well over 200 locations worldwide.
The Web host is optimized for Magento and has data centers in Europe, US, Australia and Asia. This translates to speedy file delivery wherever you are in the world. As a result, you have a 100% uptime guarantee which you can count on seeing as they always have device monitoring teams and blazing fast speeds.
Customer Support System
Rackspace’s customer support team are aptly named "Fanatical support". This term, coined in 1999, has formed the basis for the type of service you can expect from Rackspace customer support. Regardless of your service level, you have access to an account team comprising of a solution engineer, account manager, business development consult implementation coordinator and billing specialist.
For those in the higher scale of service, there is also an enterprise support engineer at your disposal. Plus in instances of assistance with professional database administration or other IT services of a more technical nature, there is a team of experts available 24/7 to help you out.
Conclusion
If you're out to find a reliable cloud services provider, there are dozens of solid reasons to go for Rackspace. In fact, there’s a lot more to expect from them especially after the recent acquisition. Overall, what's so good about the company as evident in many Rackspace reviews is that they provide the user with plenty of features as well as resources to ensure they have a smooth web hosting experience. Same also applies to their dedicated server plans.
However, if you are looking to find a web host with a variety of hosting plans such as shared, reseller, and many others that you can’t get from Rackspace, your best bet for this would be HostGator. HostGator has also built a solid reputation for itself due to their versatility and overall great performance in web hosting.
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