What is the difference, if any, between Rackspace and Rackshack? I hardly see any mention of Rackspace on here lately. Which one, Rackspace or Rackshack, is more reliable, etc?

BTW, I wish Rackshack could change their name. Besides it being confused with Rackspace, I don't know how many times I've gone to that kayak site at rackshack.com (since my browser automatically defaults to .com) :):o

I believe, although I could be wrong, that rackspace is a managed server company, and rackshack provides unmanaged servers. Hence rackspace is more expensive because they provide more support, and vice-versa.

Yes that's correct. Rackspace have an excellent reputation for support and are extremely reliable. They have excellent SLA's and are very well respected in the industry. On the other hand Rackshack offer unmanaged servers so anything that happens with the server is your problem and you have to fix it unless it is hardware related. A regular response from rackshack would usually be to do a system restore. (although the are improving)

If you know your way around Linux Rackshack are an excellent company offering some great deals but if your new to it all you would be much better off to go with Rackspace and pay for the extra level of support!!

We have one server with Rackshack, which we use for a couple of high demand sites as well as media serving.

Considering the price, we're actually quite happy with them (the server was down for a total of 40 minutes this year so far, which was due fsck taking a little longer to run). However, you can honestly forget about support. And of course if you get a server with Ensim or Plesk, DO NOT mess around with the configuration unless you know exactly what you are doing!

Greetings:

Rackshack -- decent servers, no guarantee on being able to order the same equipment (based on quantity available), high bandwidth, low investment -- no service level agreement (at least none that I can find), no hardware service level agreement -- no advanced hosting (load balancing, clustering, virtual local area network, storage area network, hardware firewalls, more).

Rackspace -- Higher variety of servers, can order the same equipment most of the time, medium investment (but more services) -- 99.999% network service level agreement, 2 hour or less hardware repair / replacement service level agreement -- advanced networking enabled with lots of options.

Thank you.

check out rackfast!

http://www.rackfast.com/home

Originally posted by DVision
check out rackfast!

http://www.rackfast.com/home

Isn't Rackfast that new company by HostRocket?

Isn't Rackfast that new company by HostRocket?

Yes that's right!! ;)

Originally posted by chrisb
What is the difference, if any, between Rackspace and Rackshack? I hardly see any mention of Rackspace on here lately. Which one, Rackspace or Rackshack, is more reliable, etc?


RackSpace offers managed servers, meaning you will get top notch tech support. RackShack is completely unmanaged, meaning that you really need to know what you're doing to be happy with them.

As long as we're off-topic...

HRBrendan, I checked your site several times throughout the morning yesterday, looking for a sales rep online. Once the box showed that reps were available, I clicked on it. Went in the queue, stayed there for a little while watching the 'waiting for an operator to respond.." scroll by. Then I minimized the chat window. An hour later, those messages were still scrolling by, with no response.

If you're going to sell some customers, you should have salespeople available online to answer questions. Just my $.02.