Hello,

Any one know anything about rackshack? Any info would be greatly appreciated!

thanks

David

I believe their service is good but their support sucks

Do a search
there support sucks major
I again had another problem wiht them they took the dns away from a site when I was trying to change it ??

if you do go with them do your own dns they have no clue what is going on at all

one of the tech people misspelled my domain and put in the wrong IP which then made my RaQ go offline and they did not know what to do so the took it off line rather than calling or anything

the site when down a few times but is OK so far
the balance is it is cheap and a lot of bandwith so that is OK
some people have had good luck some haven't
just be ready to solve your won probs

best of luck

Have you done some homework here before posting the question? there's been plenty of discussion about rackshack.

I have a 4i with them, all I can say is the reliability is pretty good, their support is very poor (unless of course you manage to find someone who knows what they are talking about, but definately I rate it a 3 out of 10)

Price, can't be beat, I guess that's why the support stinks. Thanks goodness for the Cobalt mailing list and this forum.

In my experience with them, I've found their uptime to be fantastic, their pricing to be superb, and their support to be average. Sure, they don't provide the best support in the world, but they reply very fast with fairly helpful answers. The only real problem I've had with them is their DNS servers. They've deleted domains from their DNS when I've needed them changed, and vice-versa...

Originally posted by Justin S
In my experience with them, I've found their uptime to be fantastic, their pricing to be superb, and their support to be average. Sure, they don't provide the best support in the world, but they reply very fast with fairly helpful answers. The only real problem I've had with them is their DNS servers. They've deleted domains from their DNS when I've needed them changed, and vice-versa...


Aloha Justin
question since I have had them do this with 3 of my domains
one time to the main RaQ IP

DOHHHH

are you running your own dns there now ???
I am thinking of doing this so they hopefully can not screw me up to bad

your thoughts

so far: scale of 1 - 10 (10 being great)

great pricing (10)

okay uptime (6)

average -> terrible support (4)

anything else?

As everyone has said so far, you just can't beat the price...especially with the bandwidth.

Their uptime and speed have been great for us so far.

While their support is not the best in the world it is definitely not the worst! Based on the price and what people have said, in this forum especially, I expected MUCH worse support.
Poor Honu gets it the worst though...if I was in Hawaii I'd buy you a beer brother! :beer:

Overall I'd say RackShack's well worth the money.

do they have 24hr toll free support?

While their support is available 24hrs, the numbers are not toll free...unless you're in Texas of course.

toll free is not essential. My concern is if my server goes down at 2am in the morning I can call someone to have it fixed/restarted/reconnected/turned on etc.

I notice they use live chat. Pretty cool. I tried it a couple times and got responses from people there ...

The chat has proved to be pretty useful to me both times I needed help from them. It took a little while and a couple people to find answers, but in the end my problems were solved. I haven't had to resort to calling their tech support yet...I've read good and bad about that too.

I would assume that the same people who man the chat are the people who handle phone calls ... could be wrong here. Find it hard to believe that they would dedicate 2 tech people to only doing chat support :)

Hi there,

I've been with Rackshack for just over 5 weeks now - I rate them as follows (on a scale of 1-10):

[1] Price -> 9.
Even with the high setup fee and extra monthly charges for memory, IP addresses, etc ...

[2] Uptime (network connectivity)

The RaQ 4i server itself -> 9.5
It was down one Sunday for 1-2 hours, but it could've been a general network problem. We're based in South Africa, so it is sometimes difficult to figure out where the network went down - only one of the two 3rd party site monitors that we use, reported this outage.

Rackshack site (member login) -> 7
We are GMT +2, which explains that one, they tend to do maintenance during the very early hours of the morning, when we start our day. It sometimes causes hassles when we want to add a new DNS (yes, we do make use of their DNS server!). This also renders the online ticket system useless.

[3] Support -> 7
Surprise, surprise - but most of my online tickets were dealt with quite promptly. There was only one major problem with the RaQ - the virtual sites' admin html files and directories got lost. Apparently it is a known RaQ bug - Rackshack sorted that one out very quickly (they also provided me with the script just in case it happens again).

[4] Speed -> 9
What more can I say? The only other alternative we looked at, are some 4-5 hops further away (when using traceroute).

[5] Billing -> 9
The few issues that we had, were sorted out via e-mail, and fairly quickly as well.

[6] Backups -> 3
They don't have any on-site backup facilities (not from what I've seen on the site). Bummer!

[7] Firewalls -> ?
Who knows?

All in all, they offer a great package. But you need to know something about Linux and Apache. And if all else fails - the support on this forum and the Cobalt lists are just great!

Hope this helps,

Johan

Like many people say, you have to know what you're doing. If you know enough about linux and have a good book about it you can save a lot of other questions to rackshack.
Try to avoid needing to much help from rackshack. For example: I have all my domains at mydomain.com so I don't need their DNS -> Saves a lot of trouble i think because many people complain about it.

When your server is down, it can take a while before they restart it. They go to the hosting location 2 or 3 times a day to do these thing.
But that's not bad for $105/month. :D

FOr $99/mo (250 setup) you get a 128meg of ram, 450mhz, Raq 4 at rackshack with 150 transfer

My question is with the above hardware is it even possible to get that much transfer out of the machine?

It seems to me to even have the capability to use that much bandwith (before you machine crashes) you need more ram ... but when you buy more ram the monthly cost goes up! sooo that means by the time you have a machine that can take advantage of the bandwidth alocated you would be paying probably over 200/mo (depending how they charge for ram)

let me now if I am off base here!

thanks

David

With static html pages it could be possible. With php and mysql (like me) it's not. I can assure you that :(
But I believe 256 mb costs $29/month extra so that would still be around $1/gb with isn't bad

you are right it is still a good deal. I guess even if the price does go up ... it means you are growing and the additional funds shouldn't be too bad.

plus if you are doing remote backups the high bandwidth pays off

(still ... tis pretty sneaky approach!)

later

David

I copied my mysql dirs, 60 mb of zipped data. But the uploading speed from the server to my local computer was only 8 kb/s. I didn't understand why it was that slow!
But while I'm typing this, I suddenly remember that I set a 8 kb/s limit in my serv-U ftp server.... I really feel like a homer simpson now
:homer:

Btw, how many posts do I need to make that 'Newbie' text below my name change?? :laugh:

I was wondering what the resident experts/guru (chicken et al) think of Rackshack. Should I even give it a chance or stay away like it was a mad bee.

I think most of us here think the same about it..
It's a good deal if you look for a cheap server, but you know that you've to go somewhere else if you want real quality support.
And it's a monthly contract which is great, the only 'problem' is the $250 (even more because of tax) setup fee.

Originally posted by diyoha
I was wondering what the resident experts/guru (chicken et al) think of Rackshack. Should I even give it a chance or stay away like it was a mad bee.

Aloha,
just do your own dns on the box !!!!
there people screw up dns all the time

so get a couple extra IP's from them and set it up form the get go

the boards here or other sources are better for raq support then rackshack

its cheap ya get what ya pay for
figure it will work out to just over $130 a month for a year after your setup fee is absorbed so that is not bad for bandwith and your own box (although it is not a scsi pIII box ) so it will do for most people

4webspace is not much better as far as setup. You get no setup but you only have 32megs of ram. The advantage though is you can update with no increase in monthly fees ... but it comes to ove a hundred. So technically 4webspace does have a setup cost to get a decent machine :)

so far it looks like there are no *major* problems with rackshack that overcome the downsides (average support) I think I might go ahead and order ... wish me luck!!

I will definitely keep the board posted.

That's right.
And good luck!

(O look I'm no longer a newbie, I love these forums :) :) )

thanks for your help .... I guess you are now a wannabe!

I just recently was refered to the bad remarks that have been said about rackshack on this board. So, I figured I would check things out. I would like to note that I am merly an employee and have no say what so ever for the company. I've read almost every post on this board about rackshack, some of the postings seem to have actuall meaning, but some of them are honest mistakes. If your going to hold us against some honest mistakes one person made, that doesnt show much for how "highly skilled" you are. Not to mention, I have seen people post the same thing multiple times. This only shows me that we are obviously doing something right, if all you can complain about is one instance. As mentioned we are a new company, growing very rapidly. I'm not here to try to re-claim a name for the company, just merly point out a few interesting things that came to mind.

I've been with them for a month now.
No real complaints yet.

Their tech support is really terrible however then again its mostly free.

I used to have a dedicated server on Dialtone Internet for a while, every time you wanted to ask them anything that is even close to technical in nature they want to charge you $149 for tech support, what the **** is that? They basically ignore you until you hand over your credit card.

At least Rackshack will talk to you about whatever your problem is.

I had some weird problem with my mail server when I first got my server at rackshack, It took them 6 hours and 4 SysAdmins to fix it but they got it done :D

Originally posted by Jawsh
Not to mention, I have seen people post the same thing multiple times. This only shows me that we are obviously doing something right,
This is true. I haven't many different problems with rackshack yet (and I went through the forum as well) The only thing that stands out is the dns handling ... since it is not being done properly I will now have to handle my own dns. Which I wanted to do anyway:)

later

David

Jawsh,

Originally posted by Jawsh
I just recently was refered to the bad remarks that have been said about rackshack on this board.

<snip>

This only shows me that we are obviously doing something right, if all you can complain about is one instance. As mentioned we are a new company, growing very rapidly. I'm not here to try to re-claim a name for the company, just merly point out a few interesting things that came to mind.

Some thoughts from my side about this:

- Most people will only do something (i.e. post to this board) when they had a bad experience. People rarely take the time to tell the world about good service or when things are running smoothly.

- Others don't have 1st hand dealings with Rackshack, but are quick to point people to negative posts about the company. Beats me ...

Anyway, just keep going at it

;)

Johan

Jawsh, is the icq support the same person(s) as the irc chat support?
I always feel a bit..uhh lost in that busy chat, but I really like the icq support. You can't deny the support is a bit slow most of the times but everybody can understand that with this amount of customers..and most of the people get their own server for the first time at rackshack which probably brings in a lot of 'default' questions. But problems are always solved and that's a good thing.
Thank you rackshack :D

I have been a RackShack customer for 5 months and have used reseller solutions at another company for 4 years.

Rackshack offers some of the lowest prices available and plenty of bandwidth. This is great if you are comfortable to administering a linux server, handling security issues, configuration and upates on your own.

Rackshack's support varies significantly depending upon which technician you speak with. They do have a set of quailified techs, but these people are typcially very busy with keeping their entire operation running. Fortunately, I've only used their support a couple of times. One time I received excellent service -- the other time was not so great.

Also note, they do not have 24/7 staff on hand -- or at least who answer their phones. I have called on Friday evenings a couple of times and nobody answered. However, there was somebody in their support chat room to help and they do have a trouble ticket system.

I have been hosting web sites for over 5 years and Rackshacks prices have allowed many of my development clients, which are mostly non-profit organizations, to get a dedicated server -- thus allowing far more customization than with shared hosting.

I would recommend Rackshack to people who need dedicated servers for low to mid volume sites that are not mission criticial. You can easily accomodate many sites on a Cobalt Raq4 and run MySQL, JSP, CGI-Bin and other programs provided you add additional RAM.

If you are linux savvy, I recommend Rackshack for the budget conscious. Otherwise, I would use my old service provider, OLM Inc (www.olm.net), as they provide cost-effective solutions and tremendous support.