Comparable to RackSpace?

[m_ito]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone have a recommendation for a hosting company comparable to Rackspace? We love their service and feel 100% confident with them but their hosting fees are really high.

[marc77]

We love their service and feel 100% confident with them but their hosting fees are really high.

Then stay with them. Quality service and trust is priceless.

You have no idea what it means to move with already set-up servers and hosting accounts to a different company... (considering that you don't want to be down for a week or so).

[roban]

Rackspace offers dedicated servers and any company that offers a dedicated server will be expensive. You might want to look into managed servers.

[marc77]

@m_ito: What are your requirements for webhosting ? Do you need a full-featured server with root access, a virtual server, a webhosting account with the ability to run CGI scripts (Perl, Python, PHP, etc.) or just a safe place for your static website and e-mail ?

[brokensaber]

@m_ito: What are your requirements for webhosting ? Do you need a full-featured server with root access, a virtual server, a webhosting account with the ability to run CGI scripts (Perl, Python, PHP, etc.) or just a safe place for your static website and e-mail ?

If you have either Windows Vista Premium to Ultimate, you already have IIS which can handle anything you throw at it. It is not installed by default.

It is very user friendly and you can learn everything relatively easy. All the information you need is on IIS.net.

In my opinion hosting your own site is the smartest thing a person can do.

[marc77]

In my opinion hosting your own site is the smartest thing a person can do.

Just can agree, but you must know what you do... we host our websites of our own (and some client sites as well), this is not an easy job.

Also I'm unsure about the limitations of IIS on Windows (Vista). I can remember that it is not allowed to have more than ten concurrent connections at a time - Microsoft wants to sell its Small Business Software, of course ;-)

An alternative would be Apache for Windows, which installs easily (at least if you have some experiences with such kind of software and you definitively should have when taking the challenge of hosting your site yourself).

[brokensaber]

Also I'm unsure about the limitations of IIS on Windows (Vista). I can remember that it is not allowed to have more than ten concurrent connections at a time - Microsoft wants to sell its Small Business Software, of course ;-)

That was true of Windows XP, but not necessarly IIS7 and Vista. Now some may debate this, but connections are qued and the fact is all web servers open port 80 load then close till the next action. Many Sites even asp.net , IIS.net among others run on IIS7. Web Server 2008 is more geared to hosting companies.

Just can agree, but you must know what you do... we host our websites of our own (and some client sites as well), this is not an easy job.

Under apache it can be a pain (and I used all the flavors of apache + abyss before) but with IIS7 it is real easy. Setting up your domain, web server, ssl, smtp server, ftp server, security, rewrites if needed and lanquage support. Microsoft made it real easy and anyone can get a full blown site up within an hour or two with all that I have mentioned.

[marc77]

Microsoft made it real easy and anyone can get a full blown site up within an hour or two with all that I have mentioned.

Don't forget that you need at least one static IP address (dynamic DNS services are not really a choice when it comes to professional hosting) and a reliable Internet connection with a high uplink.