Goodbye Rackspace, Hello Amazon Lightsail

Today ended my 6 year relationship with Rackspace. In 2011 I got myself a Linux VPS for Find Your Tennis. The first one had 256MB of RAM. Over the years I added more personal projects including an online data conversion tool, a couple iOS games, and a few Wordpress sites (bad idea — spent way too much time un-hacking them). I therefore upgraded to 1GM of RAM. But in 2017, it was costing me 45 USD a month for that first-gen Rackspace VPS. Way too expensive.

I asked Rackspace to move me to a cheaper plan (20 USD instead of 40 USD). They said sure! But I would have to start a new generation server and migrate all of my sites to it. Fair enough. That was a sound plan. After all, my Debian was pretty old and no longer supported.

However Rackspace hit a wall last year and was gobbed by a private equity firm. They couldn’t compete with the competition I guess. For 10 USD a month you can get a reliable 1GB machine.

Nevertheless, I gave Rackspace another chance to keep me as a customer. As they trademarked, they do have “Fanatical Support”. Over the years I’ve had to reach out and chat to their support a number of times. Every time I got superb service. In light of the competition, I asked again for a price reduction, I was turned down again. Migrating to a new gen server was the only path. Well screw that. Being much more experienced today with LAMP, I felt I no longer needed their support. Price became much more important. It was time to go shopping.

As a side note, being an entrepreneur myself often competing against others, this decision did put things in perspective. Price is an edge. Its only a matter of time before it trumps other competitive advantages. Especially for commodities. That outcome is inevitable.

I landed my choice on Amazon Lightsail. I’ve been meaning to play with AWS for a long time. This was a chance to jump into that ecosystem. I picked a Bitnami LAMP stack and was fast on my feet. I was able to move my sites rapidly. Up to now I truly love it. Instructions are so clearly documented and it feels secure. Thanks Lightsail and Bitnami. I hope we have a long relationship together.

Today, March 4 2017, I deleted my Rackspace VPS. It ran over 6 years and served me well. Goodbye Rackspace. I wish you the best.