Amazon Lightsail vs Rackspace Managed Hosting

Likelihood to Recommend

1. It's highly recommended for users who are looking to build their own VPN service2. Amazon Lightsail provides plenty of outgoing data for any use case (e.g., a $3.50 plan provides 500GB of outgoing data)3. Can be used to deploy containerized applications that require scaling4. Plans ranging from $3.50 to $160 a month, which is awesome

Read full review

Sandesh Singh

FrontEnd Development Engineer

Genius Systems Pvt. LtdInternet, 201-500 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Rackspace is very well suited as a IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) provider, particularly when you're planning on leaving the infrastructure up for a period of time. They seem to focus a bit more on that aspect of infrastructure. That is to say, they seem to promote running servers for longer periods of time and not spinning up/shutting down servers frequently based on usage spikes.While, they do support that sort of availability -- they don't have features built into their offering, necessarily, that make it a lot easier to implement.Our experiences with Rackspace have been 100% around their cloud platform, but they have another entire part of their business that is centered around hosting/maintaining/supporting physical hardware (bare metal). They have had a great reputation over the last several years (10+) for being top-notch providers in this space, which is one reason we even considered them for our Cloud-based hosting needs. We don't have any direct experience with their "bare metal" offerings, but their reputation is certainly great, and worth noting.

Read full review

Jim Rubenstein

Chief Technology Officer

LoudDoor, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

View all 11 answers on this topic

Feature Rating Comparison

Amazon Lightsail

Rackspace Managed Hosting

Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime

Dynamic scaling

Elastic load balancing

Pre-configured templates

Monitoring tools

Pre-defined machine images

Operating system support

Security controls

Pros

Value instances packages
Better organized UI
Easy billing resulting in higher efficiency
Cheaper than competition
Better support staff
Can adjust for any bills you may have incurred by accident

Read full review

Sandesh Singh

FrontEnd Development Engineer

Genius Systems Pvt. LtdInternet, 201-500 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Fanatical Support - I can't stress how great their team is. Not only are they knowledgeable, whenever I call in (during the day or in the middle of the night), I never have to wait more than a minute to speak to someone.
Webmail, Hosted Exchange, and Office365 Support - As an IT team of one, Rackspace's cloud solution and migration team has really helped me over the years to minimize issues for users, but also provide a reliable and flexible email platform.

Read full review

Jordan Leano

IT Manager

Modus OperandiMarketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees

View all 11 answers on this topic

Cons

Very little documentation
Fewer support options in Amazon Lightsail
They only allow one adjustment and force you to terminate the instance that caused the issue before adjusting
Be aware of your usage in AWS
Always check for any extra unwanted bills

Read full review

Sandesh Singh

FrontEnd Development Engineer

Genius Systems Pvt. LtdInternet, 201-500 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Their backup tools are confusing and could use some clarification. We ended up getting charged for backup licenses on nonexistent servers, and that was frustrating because they would not refund us the fees as they declared it our fault for misunderstanding their terms.
They need to stop charging for "fanatical" support. Their support service has gotten worse over the years and now they are charging us a monthly fee. It's enough of a rub that we'll most likely move our servers to a different company.

Read full review

John Reeve

Co-founder, lead developer

IntervalsInternet, 1-10 employees

View all 11 answers on this topic

Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Rackspace Managed Hosting 2.2

Based on 2 answers

If I wake tomorrow completely incapable of managing a client cloud operation, our dedicated Rackspace Cloud Engineering Team is deployable as literal extension of our business, immediately addressing all needs and requirements without cause of business disruption for our consultancy, and more importantly for the mission-critical ones of our clients. For this reason alone, Rackspace is our choice of choices!

Read full review

John Wooten

§ Chief Executive Consultant

╬ ConsultEDInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality assurance tasks, and provide much more efficient and better apps with our microservices architecture.

Read full review

Sandesh Singh

FrontEnd Development Engineer

Genius Systems Pvt. LtdInternet, 201-500 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

AWS is more and reliable and will work better for our organization from now on. Rackspace has served its purpose but is a slowly dying service. I will still happily give them kudos where it is deserved and they did great in their prime. Amazon is slowly taking over and edging everyone out and you need to jump ship at some point if you want to keep up.

Read full review

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 201-500 employees

View all 11 answers on this topic

Return on Investment

Highly efficient for our microservices architecture
Price to performance
Scalability
Adjustments for unwanted bills or charges
Wide selection of services entice you to use Amazon Lightsail
Able to deploy web apps to a full infrastructure.

Read full review

Sandesh Singh

FrontEnd Development Engineer

Genius Systems Pvt. LtdInternet, 201-500 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Responded to slowdowns very quickly, therefore negating lose of earnings at peak times
When speaking to the right people eventually, they suggested solutions that have improved server response, which should have a positive impact on site speed (and so CR)
Load balancing allows for an efficient workflow in implementing new features while not losing traffic
Originally set some configurations low, which negatively impacted server performance. This was rectified with memory expansion following some discussions.

Read full review

Gideon Caspi

Web Manager

Joe BrownsRetail, 51-200 employees

View all 11 answers on this topic

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Amazon Lightsail Editions & Modules

Edition

512 MB Linux	$3.50¹
1 GB Linux	$5.00¹
2 GB Linux	$10.00¹

Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Rackspace Managed Hosting Editions & Modules

Edition

Linux	$23.00¹
Windows	$75.00¹
Windows + SQL	$128.00¹

Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Amazon Lightsail

Rackspace Managed Hosting

Amazon Lightsail

Rackspace Managed Hosting

Amazon Lightsail vs Rackspace Managed Hosting