Dedicated Server Smackdown! Who's the best?

Who's the best?

  • Softlayer

    Votes: 22 47.8%

  • Rackspace

    Votes: 13 28.3%

  • The Planet

    Votes: 11 23.9%
  • Total voters
    46
Mike

Mike

New member
Jun 27, 2006
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On the firing line
I'm looking at the "Big 3" right now and trying to determine which one to go with.

Rackspace - very expensive, are they worth the extra cost?

Softlayer - well known and respected, but don't offer managed.

ThePlanet - didn't they have a fire? that's all I know about them.

Which horse are you backing?

One thing that I like about all three is they have datacenters in Dallas, TX, and are connected with all the major network provider.

Any other points I should be aware of / consider?

Appreciate the input!
 


Softlayer has excellent support, and are managed (if you pay extra for stuff they don't normally cover). Resellers of Softlayer, well that can be a different story (ie: 100tb), rackspace by comparison overcharges for inferior hardware and they didn't seem to do as well for support as softlayer.
 
They are a little difficult to compare since their offerings are so different (Rackspace=managed, Softlayer=unmanaged, ThePlanet=both). Are you looking for managed support? Do you need the automation that Softlayer provides? What features are most important to you? etc
 
Managed or unmanaged isn't such a big deal since there are enough management companies out there. Maybe that sounds naive, but I've used PlatinumServerManagement before and was very happy with their services / pricing.
 
Can't comment on those 3 but I'm quite happy with Liquidweb. They always have a deal or two up at WHT.
 
I would go for Softlayer.
I don't remember all the reasons but I searched for all in WHT some years back, and I ended up with Softlayer and Liquidweb.

There were quite a few reasons for not chosing theplanet (aren't they related to Hostgator, which I think is reason enuff, if they are). Rackspace overcharges for nothing..and even techcrunch moved to wpvip :) from rackspace
 
Softlayer. They have awesome network/hardware/support. Hopefully the merger with theplanet doesn't change any of that.
 
There doesn't have to be a top 1. I think they all rock. With any of those three you will not lose. I've heard great things about all three, and I've really been inside one of the Planet DCs (They have 2 or 3 last time I checked). Great people and the facility was very impressive.

Sidebar: Awhile back the planet had a huge transformer blowout on one side of their DC. But due to good planning it only took out a section of their customer base. They were very open and forthcoming about information during the incident, the root cause and lessons learned. There is a whole subsection of their forum about it Board Message
 
Well, well, well, look who decided to stop by.... Webair.

I thought I'd give them a shout and and commend them on their service. I've been with Webair for the past 4 or 5 years. I first started with them on a virtual account and then moved on to a dedicated server. I have to say that in the 5 years I've been with them I've had nothing but positive experiences. Their techs know how to solve problems that might arise (installing software, reboots, really whatever) and are always reachable via live chat in the control panel or via phone.
Hell, I've even requested to have my monthly bill lowered to stay competitive with the falling cost of dedi's and they've done it without blinking an eye.

This really sounds like an advertisement for them and I suppose it is. They have done me well so I will do them well.
 
Rackspace is RIDICULOUSLY over priced.

I pay over $3,200+/mo in hosting fees - Servers, Private Rackspace, Firewalls, Load balancers - and I use The Planet.

You get dedicated account reps, and they have SLA's where issues are resolved in under an hour.

In my lifetime with them - I have experienced 1 outage that only lasted ~3 hours before everything was back up and running.

In my eyes, they are the absolute best.
 
I've already got servers at LiquidWeb, so that's why I didn't include them.

Not a reflection on LiquidWeb, by any means. They've been great. I just want to see what else people recommend, and so far through my research and this thread it sounds like Softlayer is the way to go for the next server.
 
You should look into Verio. They have a Texas location and a Virgina location for servers. I like the Virgina location since it's very near their DNS hub (They own one of the main 3 in the US). They aren't great for Windows hosting if you want to be able to execute applications, but for everything else they have amazing servers and speed for.

My dedicated has only gone down twice in the past year for server maintenance, but I was informed 1-2 weeks prior each time.

They have amazing tech support. I've only had to ask for a tech 3 once, everything else has been able to be handled by tech 1's in under a few minutes.

Last weekend I had to call in to figure out what I did to my sendmail. This was on Labor Day, the guy called me back after our phone conversation after he said he fixed it about 30 minutes prior. I had gone to walk my dog and came back just as the phone rang. Evidently he checked back up on it after finishing another call just to see if it was still working and saw it was back down. So we got it fixed that second time. I like preemptive service. I haven't had the tech support care that they show anywhere else I've used prior.

Oh, and it's native English speakers for tech support, 24/7. That's another thing I haven't had before.

I haven't used The Planet, but I did look into them before Verio happened to call me up about being one of their Reseller Partners last year. I hadn't heard of them before the call and it happened to be just when I was figuring out where to move all my clients over to after losing it with Siteground's ever shitting customer support tickets.
 
I've had servers at SoftLayer and The Planet for years. TP has given me some amazing deals, but SL has definitely had the best service.

I expect the SL and TP merger to go pretty well - SL was, after all, the result of people leaving TP to take things in their own direction. They left on good terms, with the exception of some contention regarding the back end control panel.

TP wants to leverage the fact that SL has a wider range of datacenter locations, and SL wants to leverage some of the other services that TP offers.


As for the TP fire thing, they had a problem with a faulty transformer. It blew. They had backup generators that would have prevented there from being much interruption, but the Houston fire department made them turn them off.
 
Well, I picked up a Softlayer server today. It's a monster compared to the other servers I've had in the past. Getting shit setup and configured right now. Thanks for all the input guys!
 
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