[JohnTHaller]

Rackspace's real strength is in their managed services. Either with a managed dedicated server or managed cloud account. The level of support and assistance you get is something that isn't even available from Amazon, Google, etc. It seems, however, that Rackspace is feeling the pressure from both large and small players and some businesses go with Amazon, Google, etc and do all the OS and stack management in house while others go with the lower end (features/price/SLA) of a Digital Ocean or similar.

Don't get me wrong, I think there's a place for all of them, and actually use both Digital Ocean as well as a Rackspace managed dedicated and cloud setup. But I think a lot of people are buying based on price and just accepting a lower level of support in the process. Oddly, some folks seem surprised by the lower level of support of some of these services (no phone support, lesser monitoring, increased downtime, backups that are lost when the node fails, etc), even several HN posters when these services have issues.

[imsofuture]

Rackspace has been dropping the ball on support, big time, over the past 6-12 months. I'm not sure what's changed, but it's not for the better.

[FireBeyond]

I'd have to agree... we have tickets that go days without response, for things like requesting an increase in server quota (nothing ridiculous - like the ability to spin up an additional 6 servers / 96GB RAM - when we are a long term customer who spends five digits a month with them).

[dpcan]

My experience has been the opposite.

Live Chat help seems to fix just about every single problem we have on the fly, and they open Tickets when it gets more complicated, with thorough and fast follow-up.

I have never been happier with my hosting support, and I've used company after company over the years. I've now been with Rackspace (Sites and Cloud Servers specifically) the longest.

I should note that I ended up with them because they took over SliceHost (also great support), so I didn't really "choose" Rackspace based on anything, but loved SliceHost, and the transition was seamless, and the great support seemed to follow.

[imsofuture]

No joke, they took away our ability to use chat support a few months ago.

Why? Because we're such an important client, that they want us to have a more personal relationship, by forcing us to interact over the phone. I wish I were kidding.

[dpcan]

This freaks me out. Live Chat is my life-blood, especially given my schedule and number of clients. Particularly regarding issues with my Sites customers.

[JohnTHaller]

It's odd. I think of 'live chat' as cheap-o support manned by folks who likely can't fix anything, since that's been my experience. To the point that I won't use something for production if that's all they offer. The cheap guys offer a live support linke, often offline, and call it 2/47 support. Well, if that, the very inexpensive guys offer web-based tickets only. No phone, email, or live chat.

Rackspace has folks that know how to fix a complicated issue on RHEL stack at 3am, which is nice. And, unlike a cheap host who has an SLA that guarantees 100% uptime but only refunds you for time lost, Rackspace's SLA incentivizes them to fix things ASAP. Things like a dedicated box having a hardware failure will be restored in an hour and they credit you 5% of your monthly fee for every hour over that. Or 5% for each 30 minutes of downtime due to data center issues (power, network, HVAC, etc). And they do make good on it.

[imsofuture]

Chat support is extremely helpful when it comes to minor issues. Sure, if there's a core networking issue in the datacenter that's strangely impacting my servers I want to be on the phone with a well-informed tech.

Rackers are a smart bunch, their first-level chat support is great for the million minor issues I need solved. ("We've got a noisy neighbor, can you check it out?", "Can you move this VM to a new host?", etc.)

That's 10 seconds of divided attention required from me vs 10 minutes of dedicated attention for a phone call.

[bobfunk]

Same happened to us. Took away live chat around the same time.

[avelis]

I phone called a Racker on Christmas Day for support. Attentative and helpful. I was impressed.

[nickstinemates]

Given that, maybe one of the big players who want an entry in to the hybrid cloud/enterprise cloud space could use Rackspace's popularity as an entrypoint.

I am a huge fan of Rackspace. They're a bunch great people who sure have a refreshing view on how to take care of their employees, their community, and their visitors.

[akurilin]

Comparison with SoftLayer re: dedicated servers?

[JohnTHaller]

I know Rackspace does fully managed dedicated servers at a much lower pricepoint. SoftLayer charges $299 for managed on top of what you already pay and you must be billing at least $2500 a month to get that. Plus you need to add a dedicated firewall at $1,998 a month in order to be eligible for managed. (Source: I just spoke with a SoftLayer sales agent via live chat as I was looking into them for hosting.)