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Their service level went from amazing to awful once they were purchased by private equity. As a result after having been Rackspace clients since 2007 my compan

by crikli 8y ago

Their service level went from amazing to awful once they were purchased by private equity. As a result after having been Rackspace clients since 2007 my company started moving our clients away from them over 24 months ago and finished November of last year. I very much miss when their support truly was fanatical. Edit: duration of service, clarity

antidaily 8y ago
My experience as well.
jwdunne 8y ago
Yes. They say the bulk of the cost is fanatical support but it's been far and away from that lately. It's like £1000 a month for a low end server and crap support. It's ridiculous now. For example, we agreed a planned maintenance window 2 weeks ago. It happened, it failed and they left the server offline for 7 hours after the window cut off. We asked of compensation was available. It took 7 days just for the account manager to say no. I can accept that it's in the ToS but is 7 days for a response from our account manager 'fanatical support'? We're in the process of moving our WP sites to WPEngine, where the support is much better, and software we maintain for clients to AWS for a fraction of the cost either way.
- crikli 8y ago
  Man...it sucks because they used to be so great. I could make a call and be instantly connected to a Linux tech that was often a better sysadmin than anyone we had on staff, which was why we really encouraged clients to pay the premium for their service. The choices then were a) host cheap and pay $150-200K in sysadmin salaries to keep it going while passing on these costs to clients or b) host at RS and use their economy of scale. Easy decision. Then they got bought by Apollo and I hoped what I"d seen happen with other companies bought by private equity wouldn't happen. The PE model only gives a shit about profit, which is at odds with a service focus. Rather than seeing profits as the by product of a good model, excellent service, and loyal customers, profits become the measuring stick by which operational costs are measured. So that Linux tech that cost $120K+ per year gets binned and replaced with two juniors who cost less but together are unable to accomplish in thrice the time what the binned guy could do. Hold times start to creep up because shit isn't getting fixed. So they hire more juniors who still can't get things done quickly. Guys like me put up with this for a brief time and then bail because the pricing can no longer be justified. I'm sure it's true that the bulk of their cost is support, but it's not fanatical anymore because the folks that really were so have been gone for years.
  - jwdunne 8y ago
    They were incredible. In fact, so good that it was educational. Whenever we had a problem, I'd ask for full technical details and I'd come away with something. A big portion of my admittedly limited knowledge of sysadmin work came simply from working with their admins to fix problems that'd come up with growth. That's not the case anymore and it's clear nobody gives a hoot. We are getting a DDoS a few months ago. Their solution: null route our server. Wanted DDoS mitigation options. They wanted me to speak to a sales rep, who insisted it wasn't a sales call, and refused to put their possible options in writing. As a rule, I only make decisions or open discussions if and only if I have something to discuss in writing. That never used to be a problem. Everything was transparent. It's become a nightmare driven by sales reps that want to "customise" a solution - the same kind of solution that they deployed a few years ago that worked for the exact same problem.
    - crikli 8y ago
      "it's clear nobody gives a hoot" Bingo. Back in the day the person I reached on that first phone call really did give a shit _and_ they had the skillset combined with the authority to find and implement solves. At the end of our working with them whether the person I spoke with cared or not wasn't the issue any more: it had taken 30 minutes plus to get to them and it was a very junior person who didn't have the skills or authority to run an ls -la from the bash prompt. I'm still pretty bitter, obviously! My company ate a lot of costs moving clients away from RS. And in many cases we had to rebuild our credibility a bit after the company we glowingly recommended started failing to hold up their end.
    - Rapzid 8y ago
      I used to work at RS. If the person had been there for years, they probably do still care. Having also worked at Wells Fargo back in the day it almost sounds like they are tying sales referrals into support performance metrics. Sounds aweful. The culture started going downhill around the time they were bringing Bank Of America employees into cloud operations upper management and they were chain hiring their pals.. Lot of talent was disease franchised and leaving.
  - exUKRacker 8y ago
grecy 8y ago
I have a dedicated linux VPS with them and use their CDN a lot. The prices seem so high, I'm considering moving. Any suggestions?
- mdasen 8y ago
  There's the usual suspects like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. If you're just looking for a VPS, DigitalOcean is cheap and easy.
  - jdhawk 8y ago
    and Linode.
    - noir_lord 8y ago
      Linode have been my goto since ~2010. Never had any downtime and the only degradation I can remember was when they got hit by a collosal DDoS a few Christmases ago (since then they've invested very heavily on ensuring that can't happen again, US DC's where down/sporadically up for days). Hands down my default choice.
    - mifreewil 8y ago
      I’d stay away from Linode. They’ve had so many major security issues over the years that at this point they are like the Yahoo Mail of VPS in my mind.
  - Wintereise 8y ago
    There's AWS LightSail too.
- morganvachon 8y ago
  Vultr or HostUS. Vultr's support is top-notch and their plans are flexible and reasonable. I don't work for either but I've hosted with both (still do with Vultr) and love both.
unclebucknasty 8y ago
PE ownership explains everything. This is going exactly per the PE playbook.
Neil44 8y ago
I had boxes on Rackspace and Linode at 1/10 the price, if anything Linode was better on both uptime and support. At one time Rackspace justifies the price tag, but that’s not been for years now.
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
They focused on Professional Services - that's what Apollo (the private firm that acquired them) thought it would make sense business-wise. And somehow it did, although it probably costed the company its soul, and now increasingly his loyal customers. A pity.

by crikli 8y ago

antidaily 8y ago

My experience as well.

jwdunne 8y ago

Yes. They say the bulk of the cost is fanatical support but it's been far and away from that lately. It's like £1000 a month for a low end server and crap support. It's ridiculous now. For example, we agreed a planned maintenance window 2 weeks ago. It happened, it failed and they left the server offline for 7 hours after the window cut off. We asked of compensation was available. It took 7 days just for the account manager to say no. I can accept that it's in the ToS but is 7 days for a response from our account manager 'fanatical support'? We're in the process of moving our WP sites to WPEngine, where the support is much better, and software we maintain for clients to AWS for a fraction of the cost either way.

crikli 8y ago
Man...it sucks because they used to be so great. I could make a call and be instantly connected to a Linux tech that was often a better sysadmin than anyone we had on staff, which was why we really encouraged clients to pay the premium for their service. The choices then were a) host cheap and pay $150-200K in sysadmin salaries to keep it going while passing on these costs to clients or b) host at RS and use their economy of scale. Easy decision. Then they got bought by Apollo and I hoped what I"d seen happen with other companies bought by private equity wouldn't happen. The PE model only gives a shit about profit, which is at odds with a service focus. Rather than seeing profits as the by product of a good model, excellent service, and loyal customers, profits become the measuring stick by which operational costs are measured. So that Linux tech that cost $120K+ per year gets binned and replaced with two juniors who cost less but together are unable to accomplish in thrice the time what the binned guy could do. Hold times start to creep up because shit isn't getting fixed. So they hire more juniors who still can't get things done quickly. Guys like me put up with this for a brief time and then bail because the pricing can no longer be justified. I'm sure it's true that the bulk of their cost is support, but it's not fanatical anymore because the folks that really were so have been gone for years.
- jwdunne 8y ago
  They were incredible. In fact, so good that it was educational. Whenever we had a problem, I'd ask for full technical details and I'd come away with something. A big portion of my admittedly limited knowledge of sysadmin work came simply from working with their admins to fix problems that'd come up with growth. That's not the case anymore and it's clear nobody gives a hoot. We are getting a DDoS a few months ago. Their solution: null route our server. Wanted DDoS mitigation options. They wanted me to speak to a sales rep, who insisted it wasn't a sales call, and refused to put their possible options in writing. As a rule, I only make decisions or open discussions if and only if I have something to discuss in writing. That never used to be a problem. Everything was transparent. It's become a nightmare driven by sales reps that want to "customise" a solution - the same kind of solution that they deployed a few years ago that worked for the exact same problem.
  - crikli 8y ago
    "it's clear nobody gives a hoot" Bingo. Back in the day the person I reached on that first phone call really did give a shit _and_ they had the skillset combined with the authority to find and implement solves. At the end of our working with them whether the person I spoke with cared or not wasn't the issue any more: it had taken 30 minutes plus to get to them and it was a very junior person who didn't have the skills or authority to run an ls -la from the bash prompt. I'm still pretty bitter, obviously! My company ate a lot of costs moving clients away from RS. And in many cases we had to rebuild our credibility a bit after the company we glowingly recommended started failing to hold up their end.
  - Rapzid 8y ago
    I used to work at RS. If the person had been there for years, they probably do still care. Having also worked at Wells Fargo back in the day it almost sounds like they are tying sales referrals into support performance metrics. Sounds aweful. The culture started going downhill around the time they were bringing Bank Of America employees into cloud operations upper management and they were chain hiring their pals.. Lot of talent was disease franchised and leaving.
- exUKRacker 8y ago

grecy 8y ago

I have a dedicated linux VPS with them and use their CDN a lot. The prices seem so high, I'm considering moving. Any suggestions?

mdasen 8y ago
There's the usual suspects like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. If you're just looking for a VPS, DigitalOcean is cheap and easy.
- jdhawk 8y ago
  and Linode.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    Linode have been my goto since ~2010. Never had any downtime and the only degradation I can remember was when they got hit by a collosal DDoS a few Christmases ago (since then they've invested very heavily on ensuring that can't happen again, US DC's where down/sporadically up for days). Hands down my default choice.
  - mifreewil 8y ago
    I’d stay away from Linode. They’ve had so many major security issues over the years that at this point they are like the Yahoo Mail of VPS in my mind.
- Wintereise 8y ago
  There's AWS LightSail too.
morganvachon 8y ago
Vultr or HostUS. Vultr's support is top-notch and their plans are flexible and reasonable. I don't work for either but I've hosted with both (still do with Vultr) and love both.

unclebucknasty 8y ago

PE ownership explains everything. This is going exactly per the PE playbook.

Neil44 8y ago

I had boxes on Rackspace and Linode at 1/10 the price, if anything Linode was better on both uptime and support. At one time Rackspace justifies the price tag, but that’s not been for years now.

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

They focused on Professional Services - that's what Apollo (the private firm that acquired them) thought it would make sense business-wise. And somehow it did, although it probably costed the company its soul, and now increasingly his loyal customers. A pity.