The Rackspace system beating the server.

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Posted by OMaHTLD, 08-20-2004, 10:56 PM
Anyone seen the rackspace site http://thesystembeatstheserver.com/index.php ? It seems to be a cross between a reseller account and reselling plans. Anyone know any more? Cheers, Mark.
Posted by Haddy, 08-20-2004, 11:46 PM
Should be interesting to see how the beta goes..I signed up so Ill post information as its sent to me... Lets just hope that it doesnt turn into a situation of too much growth too fast... Atleast at $90/month it will help keep most of the kiddies away as well..
Posted by gilbert, 08-21-2004, 12:01 AM
markets and money sum this one up all over again for the server control panel
Posted by sprintserve, 08-21-2004, 03:36 AM
Cool. I can reduce from my server bills from 4 digits to 90 a month! Last edited by sprintserve; 08-21-2004 at 03:42 AM.
Posted by bob72, 08-21-2004, 03:49 AM
HI All, it looks good and coming from Rackspace, it would be a sure hit. But on the site they do not indicate anything about disk space or data transfer and their beta will take another 2 months to be available. Not sure about the deal....but I am waiting with a lot of anxiety !!! Cheers Simon
Posted by OMaHTLD, 08-21-2004, 05:36 AM
lol , Thats almost what I was thinking, except my server prices are not that high yet. Cheers
Posted by Aussie Bob, 08-21-2004, 05:46 AM
Looks like Reseller hosting from a redundant load balanced cluster platform. Good platform there, but I bet it's $90/mth just to get started, and $X/mth/domain after that. I'm sure they'll do well from that, given rackspace's excellent reputation and solid brand awareness.
Posted by reanncw, 08-21-2004, 05:49 AM
Looks interesting. I would like to hear more details. Hopefully they get onto it soon.
Posted by Haddy, 08-21-2004, 12:13 PM
Well considering they started advertising here on WHT, and it seems like its every other banner, I would imagine that they are close to the beta release...
Posted by sphere, 08-21-2004, 12:21 PM
Yep, very interesting. Very good business idea from Rackshack. But, when deeply thinking about it, don't you think it will shock the hosting industry, especially small hosting company and new hosting company with small capital. Also I think it will make a hosting industry much more difficult to gain profit and the competition is getting hard. Because it's very cheap, everyone will start to lower their price as much as possible. So finally everyone will offer to their customers only one dollar or better free for unlimited domains hosting. It will kill other company and finally only Rackshack exist, and everyone host their website from them. lol
Posted by Haddy, 08-21-2004, 12:44 PM
lol WHT pricing will be around forever....kinda like roaches... At 1/4 of the cost of their dedicated servers it will add some stiff compition to the reseller market but its still not low cost enough for most virtual hosting needs
Posted by sprintserve, 08-21-2004, 12:50 PM
The world of economics says that there's no perfect knowledge in the market. So there will always be space for others to fit their niches. Well, we don't know if it is really going to be that cheap yet. The details are sketchy. But I am sure some limits and checks will be in place.
Posted by sprintserve, 08-21-2004, 12:53 PM
Re-reading it, it says it starts as $90 per month so it definitely isn't the cheapest.
Posted by froggerd, 08-23-2004, 06:41 PM
This is from RackSPACE not Rackshack, right? Big difference. Looking at the site, it says Rackspace. Sounds very compelling. Anyone have any new pricing details? Do they pass on any info if you sign up for the beta? Think I will try myself.
Posted by Haddy, 08-23-2004, 06:59 PM
No info so far...
Posted by Aussie Bob, 08-23-2004, 10:42 PM
Yep, and I bet it's then $X/domain ontop of that $90/mth. I think it's a great product and the market they're tapping into there is absolutely enormous, otherwise they wouldn't chase it.
Posted by peersignal, 08-23-2004, 11:56 PM
It looks like a promising solution. We will see in the coming months how much their pricing plans change and of course more about how it actually works. As it sits now, it's a bit vague. Regards, Waylon
Posted by chet, 08-24-2004, 12:26 AM
Odd. This seems to be competition for their own hosting companies. I would be pissed to be a hosting company centered around resellers and using rackspace.
Posted by peersignal, 08-24-2004, 12:29 AM
How so? I see this as a way of focusing on a specific market. Which is one reason why they're launching this seperate from Rackspace's existing solutions. Regards, Waylon
Posted by Haddy, 08-24-2004, 12:40 AM
They might as well use rackspace.com/reseller considering its pasted on the site that its managed by rackspace. Did people really think that they werent comming out with this service. Its only a matter of time before they start offering basic virtual hosting services as well....In the end its all about getting as much $ as possible, as with most businesses
Posted by peersignal, 08-24-2004, 12:43 AM
True. But as you said, by focusing to a different market (e.g. the starting out web host [serious, not kids]), this would require them to drop down to a virtual level. However, their current customers pay top-dollar and are usually high-bandwidth sites and companies. Offering cheaper services would overshadow their bread and butter, so to speak. Regards, Waylon
Posted by Haddy, 08-24-2004, 01:30 AM
Whats to say that it wont be top dollar for this solution as well...I never said anything about cheap services. Im sure their price ranges will still be on the higher side of the market. Not many people want to spend $375 / min for a site or sites that may do +/- 10GB in transfer a month. With this solution where they can get the same performence that they would out of a +$1000/month system, load balancing, san storage, firewall, ect.., for a fraction of the cost and with a name known for quality, they will end up paying a high premium for the service but much less than for a dedicated solution... It still a different market than what most target..
Posted by RaTz, 08-24-2004, 09:29 AM
from what it looks like i think they are trying to offer load-balancing clustered servers at a fraction of a cost than what it would cost for them to have the same setup for every client. they're just trying to mass the approach so i thinks obviously cheaper than having that solution custom for everyone but their costs till are/will be higher than normal market costs for such a solution if one was to offer such a thing.
Posted by Dan L, 08-24-2004, 11:51 AM
I highly doubt that they will enter the shared hosting market. I remember approaching them a while back, looking for a small amount of space for backup network info sites, and they declined, saying that if I was interested, they would refer me to some of their clients who offered virtual hosting.
Posted by ice53ltd, 08-24-2004, 06:49 PM
When we left them last year the account manager mentioned that one of the founders was working on their own hosting control panel similar in functionality to H-Sphere. If anyone remembers, they used to offer H-Sphere with their servers as their 'private label' option but later withdrew it because of technical problems some customers were having. The type of person/company this current package will appeal to will be businesses which focus on something other than hosting - digital photography, IT consultancy, etc.. and who want to offer a headache-free service to their clients (so making money from hosting will not be the main objective). I can see it working with the reputation, sales and marketing that Rackspace have.
Posted by cyberdao, 08-26-2004, 07:33 PM
Looks like they are really planning to offer unlimited domains with 50MB storage and 1G bandwidth per domain - for bigger accounts / more bandwidth you would have to pay an additional fee. Quote from their homepage: "Unlimited Sites Our second objective was to avoid imposing limits where they weren't required. We didn't want to charge a per-site tax or setup fee. I think a lot of people get dedicated servers to escape those charges. With The Hosting System, you can have sites for all of your clients and also add personal sites, staging sites, and web experiments. You can literally add a new site in the control panel in about a minute. And it works even better than a dedicated server (which has limits on the number of sites it can hold). With an enterprise cluster like StableGround, you can do thousands of sites without ever having to migrate a single one. It's a very scalable solution. I know a lot of people have been burned by "unlimited" offers, but we wouldn't say that word without the hardware and expertise to back it up. Storage and Bandwidth Ideas Each site you set up will be provisioned with a comfortable amount of disk space and bandwidth. Right now, we're thinking 50 MB of drive space and 1 GB of monthly transfer, but we welcome your comments as to what seems reasonable. "