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  1. #1

    Warning about Rackspace

    The short version is that after I was late paying for my cloud servers, they sent me an email and I told them I was down to $100 for food and needed a few days for a Paypal to come through, so they just charged my card $100 instead of the full amount, and now I can't buy food or gas. Actually I had $150 left, the cleared out my account by charging $100 and then $50. I should not have told them I had any money left.

    Other than that, Rackspace servers haven't had too many problems, and although they aren't the best value, they are less of a ripoff than AWS. And their chat is always available, although it doesn't provide much in the way of engineering help.

    I have been late paying them before, so I guess I can understand them being aggressive with emails or something, but I really needed that money for gas and stuff. So it feels malicious and unnecessary what they did just deliberately clearing out the last bit of money I had in my account. I feel dumb for being honest with them.

    I only owed about $250 and should have the rest of it within a few days because this client always pays quickly through PayPal.
    Last edited by runvnc; 01-17-2014 at 09:12 PM.

  2. #2
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    Sorry to hear about your situation, but you also went with like the most expensive cloud provider out there. Rackspace can be pretty pricey if you start utilizing a lot of bandwidth.

    I tried Rackspace myself last year and they were great. Haven't had any issues
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  3. #3
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    They a great provider because of the prices their customers and clients pay. For instances you ever heard you pay for what you get? With this company they maybe possibly go hard and charged you because their services are well worth it.

  4. #4
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    Why are you using one of the, if not THE, most expensive clouds/VPS on the planet if it comes down to paying either hosting or food?

  5. #5
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    I was used them hosting upto 6 month but dont see any problem with me

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by wndml View Post
    Why are you using one of the, if not THE, most expensive clouds/VPS on the planet if it comes down to paying either hosting or food?
    I agree with this. Nothing is more important in life than learning to live within your means, and paying for what has long been well known to be one of the most expensive hosting brands out there isn't wise if you're struggling to pay for even your basics like food and energy. I mean, come on — get your priorities straight.

    What are you using Rackspace for that you can't get with something like Linode? They're still considered a premium VPS brand, but quite reasonably priced. And if even that's too much, RamNode or similar would be perfectly adequate. I run a number of successful blazing-fast websites and don't need to pay anywhere near $250 per month

    In all honesty, I don't think Rackspace did anything wrong here. While your circumstances are unfortunate, ultimately businesses have to protect themselves. Those who flake out on payments represent one of the biggest threats to a hosting provider, albeit probably less so than usual with Rackspace because they don't operate profit margins that are as tight as many hosts do.

  7. #7
    Rackspace is ridiculously priced - even more expensive than AWS for worse hardware. Stay away from it.

  8. #8
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    Really? why would you post a such a thread about a provider after you fail to full fill your agreement? I don't think providers run on I'll pay you when I have the money.. c'mon man!!

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by NetDepot - Terrence View Post
    Really? why would you post a such a thread about a provider after you fail to full fill your agreement? I don't think providers run on I'll pay you when I have the money.. c'mon man!!
    Take a second look at this. I just read this, and I'm with the OP here unless he's lying. He owed X amount, he kindly told them "I'm sorry, I only have $100 in the bank and I can't pay the bill." Instead of letting the transaction fail, they decided to reduce the transaction to the amount he had in the bank to wipe him out and wipe their hands clean? No way. Suspend the client, ignore their request for an extension if you want, but you don't reduce the transaction to the exact dollar amount they say is in their bank just to take every last penny to their name without a care in the world.

    So if I had rackspace and I opened a ticket telling them about a temporary hardship, they'd do whatever they could to wipe out my bank account? Good to know.

    Either the OP is lying or rackspace pulled a jerk move.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by bazfrank View Post
    Rackspace is ridiculously priced - even more expensive than AWS for worse hardware. Stay away from it.
    Hi bazfrank, Rackspace is considered as a big business of the cloud system.
    the other companies are:

    AWS
    Google Compute
    Windows Azure
    HP Cloud
    Comparison


    Might show proof of rackspace, about what you comment ?
    Cybernes Hosting: Hosting Cusco

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by CircuitoX View Post
    Hi bazfrank, Rackspace is considered as a big business of the cloud system.
    the other companies are:

    AWS
    Google Compute
    Windows Azure
    HP Cloud
    Comparison


    Might show proof of rackspace, about what you comment ?
    All I've claimed is that they're expensive.

    Just compare the costs yourself:

    http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/public-pricing/
    http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

    Even the simplest of configurations seem to be cheaper on EC2. From pricing out a small and medium sized node I saw rackspace as being more expensive by about 30% every time. They might be a big business, but not one I'd use. Perhaps they offer some managed services or something I've missed?

    Google's Compute Engine seems to be even cheaper in some cases:

    https://cloud.google.com/products/co...ngine/#pricing
    Last edited by bazfrank; 01-22-2014 at 12:03 AM.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by notinterested View Post
    Take a second look at this. I just read this, and I'm with the OP here unless he's lying. He owed X amount, he kindly told them "I'm sorry, I only have $100 in the bank and I can't pay the bill." Instead of letting the transaction fail, they decided to reduce the transaction to the amount he had in the bank to wipe him out and wipe their hands clean? No way. Suspend the client, ignore their request for an extension if you want, but you don't reduce the transaction to the exact dollar amount they say is in their bank just to take every last penny to their name without a care in the world.

    So if I had rackspace and I opened a ticket telling them about a temporary hardship, they'd do whatever they could to wipe out my bank account? Good to know.

    Either the OP is lying or rackspace pulled a jerk move.
    I agree. D**k move by Rackspace if that was the case. I agree that they have a right to be paid for the service they provided, but when you're a multi-million dollar company, you can work with a client for a $250 bill.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by bazfrank View Post
    All I've claimed is that they're expensive.

    Perhaps they offer some managed services or something I've missed?
    Most of the other providers you mentioned do not provide support at all, Rackspace offers various support channels to try help as best as they can without logging onto the box. If you don't need the support then you would go with AWS etc

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by bazfrank View Post
    All I've claimed is that they're expensive.

    Just compare the costs yourself:

    http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/public-pricing/
    http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

    Even the simplest of configurations seem to be cheaper on EC2. From pricing out a small and medium sized node I saw rackspace as being more expensive by about 30% every time. They might be a big business, but not one I'd use. Perhaps they offer some managed services or something I've missed?

    Google's Compute Engine seems to be even cheaper in some cases:

    https://cloud.google.com/products/co...ngine/#pricing

    Thanks for your answer.
    Cybernes Hosting: Hosting Cusco

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by bazfrank View Post
    Rackspace is ridiculously priced - even more expensive than AWS for worse hardware. Stay away from it.
    Can I ask how exactly are you basing that opinion? In comparison to what exactly?

    Please donīt compare it to Joe at home hosting on its single server or VPS that probably does not even know how to make a business plan on Excel and is selling on loss or will need to raise his prices once he starts to grow.

    I would love if you could compare it to someone that has the similar infrastructure in terms of size as Amazon or Rackspace which is allot cheaper since I consider both AWS and Rackspace already very, very cheap for what they provide.

    But then again, why do I even have to make a point, last time I checked both are the biggest hosting companies in the world in terms of revenue, size, and infrastructure, so wait, they must be doing something good.

    Of course there are similar providers, and on smaller ones you could probably even get some things cheaper or a more personal touch, etc, but I just hate it when it people trow out of thin air that AWS or Rackspace are extremely overpriced. In comparison to what?

  16. #16
    @runvnc

    Seems like a pretty low thing to do to a client. Did you ask them for an extension at all? Back when we first started, I remember a couple times clients didn't pay on time, and I needed an extra week or so to come up with the full payment. Both providers always worked with me on the payment date/extension, and even thanked me for being honest and for doing business with them.

    Now that we are a few years along, clients asks us for extensions (some for the same reasons as you), and we always grant them it.

    For Softlayer to just take all your funds though...on TWO separate charges each is ridiculous. NOT ONE charge, but the second $50 charge as well! Just with that I would move to a different provider personally. However, if you are happy with them, and the support it will probably be good to just stay if you know this won't happen again.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by runvnc View Post
    The short version is that after I was late paying for my cloud servers, they sent me an email and I told them I was down to $100 for food and needed a few days for a Paypal to come through, so they just charged my card $100 instead of the full amount, and now I can't buy food or gas. Actually I had $150 left, the cleared out my account by charging $100 and then $50. I should not have told them I had any money left.

    Other than that, Rackspace servers haven't had too many problems, and although they aren't the best value, they are less of a ripoff than AWS. And their chat is always available, although it doesn't provide much in the way of engineering help.

    I have been late paying them before, so I guess I can understand them being aggressive with emails or something, but I really needed that money for gas and stuff. So it feels malicious and unnecessary what they did just deliberately clearing out the last bit of money I had in my account. I feel dumb for being honest with them.

    I only owed about $250 and should have the rest of it within a few days because this client always pays quickly through PayPal.
    Instead of going broke all the time...my advice...switch to somewhere else....chances are almost anywhere is cheaper..by a ton or more
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  18. #18
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    As a current customer of Rackspace Cloud, I can tell you that it is quite expensive, but consider what you get in return; nothing less than quite literally outstanding service, which corresponds to the amazing quality of service I wish to provide to my clients, they definitely help you achieve those goals. And a quick call to Billing which they pick up right after you dial the support number can resolve most any issue you could think of. They will definitely work with you on payment issues if you're having hardship or difficulty meeting the invoice deadlines.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by nibb View Post
    Can I ask how exactly are you basing that opinion? In comparison to what exactly?

    Please donīt compare it to Joe at home hosting on its single server or VPS that probably does not even know how to make a business plan on Excel and is selling on loss or will need to raise his prices once he starts to grow.

    I would love if you could compare it to someone that has the similar infrastructure in terms of size as Amazon or Rackspace which is allot cheaper since I consider both AWS and Rackspace already very, very cheap for what they provide.

    But then again, why do I even have to make a point, last time I checked both are the biggest hosting companies in the world in terms of revenue, size, and infrastructure, so wait, they must be doing something good.

    Of course there are similar providers, and on smaller ones you could probably even get some things cheaper or a more personal touch, etc, but I just hate it when it people trow out of thin air that AWS or Rackspace are extremely overpriced. In comparison to what?
    Rackspace is incredibly overpriced when compared to...

    This:
    https://www.wiredtree.com/managedvps/

    This:
    http://www.liquidweb.com/StormServers/vps.html

    And this:
    https://www.linode.com/

    All of whom are quite reputable providers who at least offer full management on their products as an option if it's not included by default. Rackspace's main killer in the VPS space is their bandwidth charges. When a 1 GB VPS with no transfer whatsoever costs you $29/mo to start and they charge an exorbitant fee per GB ($0.12) compared to most other providers, you get a price range that just does not make sense for a large number of people. I understand that they have good support, but they are not the only ones who have high quality support. Even if theirs is somehow better, that still can't justify (at least to me) paying in some cases several times the price of what you can get at another good quality provider. WiredTree's base bandwidth allotment on VPSes is 4 TB/mo, which is $480 on Rackspace (source: http://www.rackspace.com/calculator/). That's patently absurd.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ghan_04 View Post
    Rackspace is incredibly overpriced when compared to...

    This:
    https://www.wiredtree.com/managedvps/

    This:
    http://www.liquidweb.com/StormServers/vps.html

    And this:
    https://www.linode.com/

    All of whom are quite reputable providers who at least offer full management on their products as an option if it's not included by default. Rackspace's main killer in the VPS space is their bandwidth charges. When a 1 GB VPS with no transfer whatsoever costs you $29/mo to start and they charge an exorbitant fee per GB ($0.12) compared to most other providers, you get a price range that just does not make sense for a large number of people. I understand that they have good support, but they are not the only ones who have high quality support. Even if theirs is somehow better, that still can't justify (at least to me) paying in some cases several times the price of what you can get at another good quality provider. WiredTree's base bandwidth allotment on VPSes is 4 TB/mo, which is $480 on Rackspace (source: http://www.rackspace.com/calculator/). That's patently absurd.
    You are comparing VPS to cloud services.

    Let me ask you something. Can I get 50 TB of space right now on this providers today? No. How about 1000 TB?

    Your comparison is not fair, it would be like comparing shared hosting to a dedicated server. The providers you mentioned are great, I donīt argue their quality and those VPS will be more than enough for most people, since hardly anyone will need those limits anyway but you are not comparing apples to oranges.

    If I was Netflix I will not be able to stream from one VPS or one of this providers. That is the difference, you are comparing a huge clusters of cloud servers to single VPSs. Of course the cluster will be more expensive in terms of maintenance and costs and in particular because metered models have to pay the idle time or non use as well as opposed to packages where customers make a fixed commitment. Not even the same service in terms of grow, performance or billing.

    AWS and Rackspace prices are cloud prices, not prepaid VPS packages. Also pre-paid packages will always be cheaper since you are paying them upfront on a monthly commitment as cloud where you donīt pay anything if you donīt use it and only pay exactly the requirements you need. If we go that route, AWS is also cheaper if you make 1 to 3 year upfront commitment.

    In terms of infrastructure of Rackspace or AWS vs any of those providers is just laughable. AWS and Rackspace are huge in numbers of servers and used space in datacenters. Not even in the same league of infrastructure and type of customers. If you would actually compare them to anyone that is in the same size, you will actually realize Rackspace and AWS are the cheapest one.

    This is why corporate customers go with them and donīt hire a single VPS because they need allot more than that. They need to be able to scale huge even if it means only a couple of days, you canīt do this on any of the packages you mentioned. Those are great for your email server or single website, not to launch a massive global apps like lets say a comment box service like Disqus, or some Facebook app, or a streaming service, etc.

    You will hit your single VPS limits in no time and once you keep adding more and more of them you will realize your costs are getting bigger and bigger in particular once you need to load balance them, share traffic, etc, it will end up costing you more than just having went with Rackspace or AWS.

    You are making the typical mistake or comparing AWS and Rackspace to very low requirements like 1 gig or ram, 1 tb of space, etc, and this are not the customer they want in the first place. If you start to compare big numbers for big data then please go ahead and tell which one is cheaper. You will find that Rackspace and AWS are the cheapest one today.

    Also, AWS and Rackspace have lower costs for bigger companies with big requirements. The bigger you get, the cheapest it gets, even lower than any of this VPS you mentioned.

    For mom and dad that has a 100$ monthly budget, any of this provider will be cheaper and give them personal support and an amazing service, but for those IT companies with huge budgets, they are not idiots, they made their numbers, they made their costs plan and they are going with this providers for a reason. Cost!

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by nibb View Post
    That is the difference, you are comparing a huge clusters of cloud servers to single VPSs.
    What are you talking about? That's the CloudFiles. CloudServers are just plain old VPS that you can provision on, off, store images off, restore, mount SANs etc... manually through the panel or via API.

    Also, their bandwidth is severely limited. While most VPS providers will share 1Gbps on the host machine or at least guarante 50Mbps, 100Mbps, 200Mbps, Rackspace will guarantee around 30Mbps on their lowest instance (22 GBP + traffic)....

    A bit more Gbps on the "service net" which is basically internal network. I can't be assed to unearth the link because it is buried on their site somewhere. It used to be open on the CloudServers main page, but now it is not, I wonder why.

    It's the most expensive service per Gbps, GB or Hz, with mediocre support. The only "good" thing about it is that you can scale storage and (re)provision images and use secondary services like the CloudFiles.

    * Edit: Rackspace won't guarantee anything, the 30 Mbps is a cap...
    Last edited by wndml; 01-23-2014 at 08:40 PM.

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by nibb View Post
    You are comparing VPS to cloud services.
    Ok, I agree. It's irrelevant, though. You're talking WAY outside the scope of what probably 90+% of the average customers on this site are interested in. This thread was started by a guy who has maybe a couple of servers. lol
    But yes:

    - Rackspace and Amazon both have way bigger infrastructures than any of the three providers I mentioned.
    - I don't think your points are representative of most of the community here.
    - Those who are big enough to really be looking for something that the providers I mentioned aren't capable of providing are probably large enough to also consider big colocation plans and running their own stuff as well. It's a completely different league.

    Also, storage is becoming pretty easy to come by these days. For example: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1334874
    WebNX regularly advertises boxes in excess of 100 TB of storage space. WAY cheaper than any of Rackspace's dedicated offerings.
    As I said, you're not wrong. But I'm just talking purely in terms of the average kind of deployment scale that gets discussed around here.

  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ghan_04 View Post
    Ok, I agree. It's irrelevant, though. You're talking WAY outside the scope of what probably 90+% of the average customers on this site are interested in. This thread was started by a guy who has maybe a couple of servers. lol
    But yes:

    - Rackspace and Amazon both have way bigger infrastructures than any of the three providers I mentioned.
    - I don't think your points are representative of most of the community here.
    - Those who are big enough to really be looking for something that the providers I mentioned aren't capable of providing are probably large enough to also consider big colocation plans and running their own stuff as well. It's a completely different league.

    Also, storage is becoming pretty easy to come by these days. For example: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1334874
    WebNX regularly advertises boxes in excess of 100 TB of storage space. WAY cheaper than any of Rackspace's dedicated offerings.
    As I said, you're not wrong. But I'm just talking purely in terms of the average kind of deployment scale that gets discussed around here.
    In my long experience of hosting services in years, what a provider advertises is completely different to what they deliver in most cases with a few exceptions, and most of this exceptions people here on WHT give them with the stick on the head about their prices, Rackspace, AWS, Softlayer, it seems most people canīt attack their quality so they attack their price and compare them to awful providers that provide cheap hardware and make all kind of gimmicks like XX bandwidth but then limit packets, or kick customers out when they start to consume wast amongs of what they paid...

    There are gazillion providers that offer this and that, but at the end of the day they try to raise the prices or claim to be out of stock when they need to deliver serious stuff since suddenly they realize their math was all wrong on those volumes.

    Examples are bandwidth speed, or storage. Hardly any of them can actually deliver completely what they advertise. So I donīt fall for any of those huge offers. SAN storage is not cheap, neither is quality bandwidth and when you start to see an offer to good to be true, there is usually a catch behind it.

    While most people do not need what I said, you are correct on that, I just posted those examples because you said they are expensive, in comparison to what was my question? That was my point.

    They offer something others canīt offer today, there are huge companies as well that can compete them in size and even they have a hard time getting those prices because you need to invest fortunes to get to those bandwidth and storage prices and still be able to scale.

    Unless you are willing to sacrifice quality in extreme ways and hide allot of nasty tricks behind a service, what Rackspace and AWS provide is good quality at an affordable price. I donīt care about better prices at worst quality that will fail, or will not work as expected.

    That does not compete or fall in the same league, you want something that works, that can scale and a providers that can deliver real things. This is why I asked in comparison to what? AWS and Rackspace are not dumbs, they provide bandwidth prices for real prices since they expect people to use it, not some XX crazy unlimited deal where you assume customers will not actually use them or need them.

    They compete themselves in price all the time and they go as low as they can investing huge sums of money, so I find it a bit naive to say they are very expensive. If this was true we would see 100 AWS providers cheaper, bigger and better, and this is not the case. Its harder than you think to get to those prices when you need to maintain a huge infrastructure.

    You cannot possible compare a bandwidth gig price that includes redundancy, load balancing, fail over, firewall, etc, with one that is just a cable plugged into the switch and thats it. This is why I said those are cloud prices, they have everything include in that price. If you start to pay extra for the firewall, the load balancer, etc, your cost will grow up very fast even if you bandwidth cost is very cheap, you get what you pay for. Both Amazon and Rackspace offer allot of features included in their prices, which are not there in other providers or cost extra.

  24. #24
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    runvnc, I feel for you brother but if you're on the breadline that badly I think you need to give up a luxury like web hosting. If the site was paying for your food and gas then fine, but evidently it is not.
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    Focused on speed. Obsessed with security.

  25. #25
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    Compared to what? Compared to Linode. Both are somewhat generous uses of the term 'cloud' in my opinion as they are really just deploying standard VPSs that they can restore quickly or move around when needed. Linode provides much better pricing and an excellent control panel, though.

    The biggest killer for Rackspace is the bandwidth pricing. I don't care which way you look at it, that's expensive. About 165 times more expensive compared to Linode in fact, considering you get 2TB out the gate.

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