Hi,

I read somewhere that RackSpace gives a bonus to both the new customer and the referrer. How much is that bonus (for both) and what do I need to do to let you and me get it? Please state if there are required contract periodes or something. Also leave your name when you are willing to get the bonus :D

Jacco

I would LiveChat with a sales person on their web site instead of "my momma's cousin's uncle's brother's sister said that two years ago...."

Both people get a $500 credit after 90 days with a 6 month contract signed.

That's the thing I hate about rackspace though - they have all kinds of special deals that only your momma's cousin's uncle's brother knows about. I much prefer a one-price for everyone setup to haggling and getting a secret handshake price.

I like the secret handshake price I got them down to $150/m for one of my servers.

Someone here offered to split the refer bonus from RackSpace awhile back, thought I can't remember exactly who offhand.

Both people get a $500 credit after 90 days with a 6 month contract signed.Yep, that's right. This is copied from the my.rackspace.com site (a site for clients to manage their servers):

Offer is not valid with any other discounts. Credits will be issued to all accounts in good standing only. Rackspace Rewards is only valid for referred customers of new status. New Customers who sign a 6-month contract of $250 or less will receive $250 credits along with their referring partner. New customers who sign a 6-month contract of $250 or more will receive $500 credits along with their referring partner.The bad thing about this is that apparently, you have to get the Rackspace client to submit your name via the form in the my.rackspace.com area to get the referral, so they can track it. I've referred quite a few clients, and they mentioned my name to the sales staff, but I didn't get any referral cash since the sales person forgot all about it and there was no record of it :(. So anyone who I referred is kind enough to tell me or their account manager so that I can the referral, that'll be very kind of you :).

If moderators think that I'm not allowed to say that, then please edit the post... since I'm not too sure if I'm allowed.

The reason I can't email these people directly is that I've been recommending people in general, like I would sometimes send PM's to people that I feel would suit Rackspace... and they join up and mention my name. So I'm not sure which signed up and which didn't sign up. I haven't sent that many PM's though, probably about 10 over that past many months.

Alan

Originally posted by zerphyte
I like the secret handshake price I got them down to $150/m for one of my servers.

Was this for your first server or after you ordered a few earlier?

Jacco

I also got a special, but would gladly pay full price for their service if asked to. You will never catch me hosting anywhere else.

I found ten other people (from my old crappy host) that wanted to leave and go with rackspace and we bought them at the same time for a smokin' deal. This is the way to go if you can find others to participate. When I say smokin' deal...I mean SMOKIN'!! Get an offer from Rackspace, then start a thread (if allowed) to see how many would be interested. Worked like a charm for me. Get the email of your sales rep that offered the deal and ask everyone interested to email him their information. Once he gets ten....voila.

Hehe...

I did this about 6 months ago. I have 5 dedicated servers that I needed to pull from a certain dedicated provider and move them to a top notch dedicated hosting company. So I did some bargaining and got a pretty nice deal.

Originally posted by Fartknocker
I also got a special, but would gladly pay full price for their service if asked to. You will never catch me hosting anywhere else.

I found ten other people (from my old crappy host) that wanted to leave and go with rackspace and we bought them at the same time for a smokin' deal. This is the way to go if you can find others to participate. When I say smokin' deal...I mean SMOKIN'!! Get an offer from Rackspace, then start a thread (if allowed) to see how many would be interested. Worked like a charm for me. Get the email of your sales rep that offered the deal and ask everyone interested to email him their information. Once he gets ten....voila.

How is RackSpace with software support? I know they basically only manage the hardware and some software updates. Their site details everything they do and what they charge for, but I've had customers tell me they do more than that.

Do they do more than their TOS says they will? For example, it says that the customer "me" has to notify them about donwtime to get credits and I heard from a large customer of theirs that when their is downtime that they will notify you and reimburse you.

Do they sign different contracts with different levels of TOS for different people? I have a really good offer from them and I'm thinking about using them.

Here's what they offered me.
PIII 1.3Ghz
36Gig 15,000 rpm SCSI drive
1Gig Ram
10Mb/s pipe included
"burstable to 100Mb/s"
less than $500/month
1 year contract

I see that they charge like $3.50/gig for transfer, and they are going to give me like 3,000+gig/month for under $500??? Will I ever get them to duplicate or come close to this again, or is this just a super deal to get me in so I'll buy all my servers from them?

Any opinions on this guys?

Oh yeah....something more on topic. A large customer of theirs is the one who referred me and actually negotiated that deal for me. They said I would get a $500 credit on my account and that they, as the referrer, would also get a $500 credit.

That seems quite cheap for rackspace. A bit to good to be true. I don't think rackspace even uses pentiums. I could have sworn they use amd's only. Is this direct from rackspace? As in do you have a quote from a rackspace sales rep or a reseller?

Okay after doing the math (yes it takes a min when your half asleep). That offer is not possible. Rackspaces bandwidth costs are ALOT more then $40/mbit which breaks down to leaving $50/m for the cost of the machine. While they do use desktop form factor machines instead of rackmounts saving costs their machines still cost around 500-800 considering quanity. They run their own facility and there is no way in hell you can get an OCx or DS3 loop let alone bandwidth to equal the cost of $40/mbit.

Are you sure your not confusing rackspace (elite provider) and rackshack (worthless crap provider)?

Actually I just assumed it was a PIII....it may be an amd. This was a quote that was gotten from RackSpace via an IT firm that has trained some of RackSpace's support personel. If I decide to go with this IT firm to train my support personel, then I will be buying this server.

The IT firm has a bunch of servers at RackSpace and also manages a bunch of servers for companies at RackSpace, so they got me the price. They like working with the people at RackSpace, so they got me this quote on the exact specs I had at my current datacenter so that I would switch to RackSpace. I know I couldn't have just gotten that price on my own. They have a lot of buying power.

I am 100% sure that I am not confusing the two. RackSPACE...the managed hosting company that everyone raves about.

When I was asked how much bandwidth I was using right now I told them less than 10Gig/month of transfer. They know I'm a startup and will never fill that pipe. I'm sure they are just giving me the ability to use up to 10Mb/s because I will never fill it up. Do you think that maybe a provider of that size has an extra 10Mb/s somewhere that's not being utilized?

PIII 1.3Ghz
36Gig 15,000 rpm SCSI drive
1Gig Ram
10Mb/s pipe included
"burstable to 100Mb/s"
less than $500/month
1 year contract That seems like an unbelievable deal... if you've got that deal from Rackspace.com, then I would definitely go for it without even thinking. But you might want to double check it with Rackspace to make sure it's a possible offering, also check the processor as Nick Geyer is right, Rackspace only use AMD processors now.

If you're using less than 10GB /month and you know that you won't be ever using the full "10Mb/s pipe", then it'll be far cheaper to get a quote for the same machine but much less bandwidth. Standard Rackspace servers come with 30GB bandwidth included... that would be plenty for you and the server cost would probably go down to the $300-$350/month mark.

When I was asked how much bandwidth I was using right now I told them less than 10Gig/month of transfer. They know I'm a startup and will never fill that pipe. I'm sure they are just giving me the ability to use up to 10Mb/s because I will never fill it up. Do you think that maybe a provider of that size has an extra 10Mb/s somewhere that's not being utilized?They won't have a "spare" 10Mb/s pipe lying around just not being used. Sure, they may have their larger bandwidth lines not being 100% used and so have additional bandwidth capacity in the lines that could be used. But they don't utilize 100% of their lines, it's only about 50% or maybe less to make sure that their customers get burstable bandwidth and to account for an DoS attacks that could happen. They wouldn't sell off their bandwidth for that cheap, it's high quality bandwidth that is also expensive to them.

Btw, if you can get this deal again, contact me, I'll be interested in this server also.

Alan

I will be using much more than 10Gig soon, plus I wouldn't give up the bandwidth deal because basically it means I'll never be paying for overages on this server.

I don't really care what the processor is. They manage the hardware so it's out of my hands.

If I can ever get this deal again, even with lower bandwidth, is the main question I'll be asking the rep. The price is actually far enough below $500 that I could resell this server at $500/month and make a decent return. If they can come close to duplicating this I'm sure I could sell a few of them.

I know that they don't have extra bandwith just laying around, but I was thinking their bandwidth usage may be in like the 39% range and they only need it in the 40% range so they have a few Mb/s to throw at their specials for free basically.

I don't care why they gave me the deal. I know they are not undercharging and are not going to go out of business, so I'll probably take it.

Update on the RackSpace quote...

RackSpace was just matching a quote that I had on a machine with 500Gig of transfer included. They were putting the machine on a dedicated 10Mb/s switch, but charging per Gig for anything over what was quoted. The rep from the IT firm misquoted the RackSpace rep and when I talked to the RackSpace rep we got it all straightened out.

I actually did opt to buy less bandwidth and get the quote down to below $350/month with active server monitoring included (RackWatch Platinum I believe they call it). I talked to the rep on the phone for a while and they do seem to be very flexible. I'm getting some more quotes direct from RackSpace emailed to me and if I don't take them I will be willing to refer anyone to them who wants the deals.

On the topic of the thread now....I asked the rep about the $500 referall bonus and he said that even if I'm not a RackSpace customer I will still get the $500 after 90 days. They will just mail me a check.