“With Cloud Servers™ you get what you want when you need it. Make a new server for staging and four new servers for production. Delete one, create three more. You only pay for what you use”

We previously reviewed Rackspace Cloud Files last year, so we thought it was about time that we brought you our review of their Cloud Servers.

General Information

Rackspace Cloud Servers offer both Windows and Linux based systems, for this review we will be testing out a Linux server.

 Prices

The price structure is based on hold long the server is in existence for, based on an hourly period. So if you only wanted a server for a few hours you only pay for those few hours. This makes it ideal for testing or other short lived projects.

Below you will find the price structure that Rackspace have for their Cloud Servers, Linux servers are priced for just $10.95/month up to $700.80/month.

Although as you will noticed the above price structure does not include and bandwidth – this is an additional charge based on how much you use. It is priced at $0.18 per GB for bandwidth out whereas bandwidth in is free.

Our Usage

After a lot of consideration we decided to have a second cloud server running alongside our VPS.Net server. This would be the home to some of our newer websites and start-up websites. So although we will not be testing it was a great deal of data, we can test speed, uptime and ease of use perfectly.

Our Review

The sign up process is easy, we will not run through this with you as it’s just a lot of billing information etc.

The control panel is easy to use and provides all the features that would you need.

The cloud server creation is a really simple process, once you’ve clicked on ‘Add Server’ you get a list of Images to choose from. We believe that this list is growing all the time so we suggest checking which images they have ready when you sign up.

Once you select the image that you wish to create your cloud server from, you will be asked for a server name (we suggest using a valid hostname) and the size that you would like it.

You will then be sent to the cloud server control panel where after a short amount of time (will vary on how big the server is) it will build the server and you will receive an email with all the information required including password.

It’s as simple as that. You are then free to install what you want on the server (eg. Cpanel).

Onto our review…

The speed of the server seems very good, ping tests using HostTracker show that it actually performs slightly better than our VPS.net cloud server.  In general speed has been very good and we haven’t noticed any slow periods and things like Cpanel etc load quickly.

Support is one of the things that Rackspace is amazing at – for years Rackspace have been known for their excellent support and customer service, although we have not yet had to use the support as we have had no issues they provide live chat, a 24/7 telephone number and ticketed support – more than any company we have ever used. We tried out their Live Chat to see how quickly a question about the Cloud Servers was answered and they provided a detailed response in less than 30 seconds with first contact being made seconds after opening the live chat window. Excellent! For those that may not have enough knowledge to run a server themselves can pay for the ‘Managed Level’ of support where Rackspace will install what you ask etc etc, this is available at $100/month.

Overall we can strongly recommend Rackspace Cloud Servers, we have found them to be very good and we will continue to use them in the future. Thumbs up from us.

 More Information

Click here to go to Rackpace Cloud Servers

Screenshots

Gigenet Cloud Servers Review

Gigenet was previously known as VPSHive.

Prices

Prices start at just $10/month for the lowest package Gigenet Cloud have to offer which would get you 384MB RAM and 15GB Disc Space. Gigenet do not appear to show a minimum CPU speed like other Cloud providers before you sign up and login, we will expand on this further below, but for the $10/month plan we can confirm you would get 0.80Ghz dedicated CPU, but unfortunately we do not have a list of dedicated CPU against the RAM/Storage, but we will try to get hold of one .

WHM/Cpanel will cost a further $10/month which seems to be standard across cloud server providers.

Gigenet Cloud Prices

Our Usage

We decided to run a small site that we have achieving around 100 visitors per day to check for up time and response time, so unfortunately we were no able to test this cloud server with one of our bigger sites, but this should still give us an indication of what Gigenet Cloud Servers are like.

Our Review

The signup process is simple and pain free, to get into the control panel you just need your personal details including your Credit/Debit card information, before you get to the control panel you do not need to select machine size etc. We suggest you consider what kind of plan you need carefully, if your just starting out remember you will not need a large cloud server. The best thing about a cloud server is that you are able to upgrade at any point so if you just have a couple of small sites start off on a small package and upgrade when needed.

Once you’ve created your account you need to decided what resources you are willing to use/spend taking into account extras like Cpanel, IP addresses. It will give you your cost per month as you use the slider to assign resources. When you’ve decided on that you can go ahead and create your cloud server.

Like other Cloud Server providers, Gigenet Cloud Servers give you the option from a number of system templates including preinstalled Cpanel etc and Windows Servers. You will find a full list on their website.

Once created it is just like a normal server. If you have chosen to have WHM/Cpanel you will need to follow the setup wizard at yourIP:2086 (login with username ‘root’ and the password will be specified once you create the cloud server), the setup is simple enough.

Although the control panel has all the information and functions that would be needed, we found that sometimes we thought that sections could have been in a better place and things could be done differently. We think this is probably personal opinion, what doesn’t suit us, may suit someone else.

Speed wise we found Gigenet to be very similar to our VPS.net Cloud Server, which was slightly quicker than a normal VPS that we tested it agaisn’t.

General support is free of charge, we do not have response times as we have never really had a technical support issue, although sales team responded quickly to emails and Live Chat with sales is also answered within about 10 seconds. We have email support for a non-technical issue and it was resolved within an hour (Working Hours), but we have not emailed them outside ‘normal’ working hours.

Overall we found Gigenet Cloud Servers to be one of the leaders in Cloud Server providers especially as they are still reasonably new in the market. Not our number one at the time of writing, we still believe that VPS.NET is a better option, but Gigenet is certainly number 2.

More Information

Click here to go to Gigenet Cloud

Screenshots

Gigenet Cloud Main Control Panel

Gigenet Cloud Server Creation

Rackspace Cloud Logo

We here at Clloud, have heard a rumour that Rackspace Cloud will soon we releasing a revamped version of their control panel, probably within the next couple of months, which is suggested could include long awaited features such as CNAME support.

We are unsure at the moment if the revamped control panel will be for both Cloud Server and Cloud Files users, or if it will just affect Cloud Files users. We expect that it will be both with hopefully a wide range of new features.

When we find out more information we will update you all.

Happy Clloud’ing!