October 22nd, 2008
Big news - Rackspace and Slicehost
What an amazing day for Slicehost and our customers! Our acquistion by Rackspace has been announced and we couldn’t be more excited. Jason and I started Slicehost two years ago and it grew beyond our wildest dreams. Selling the company was not in the cards. So what changed? A few months ago the Rackspace team invited us to talk – we couldn’t have walked away more impressed. In Rackspace, we discovered a larger version of ourselves – a hosting company passionate about their customers and the technology behind their business. As the process leading to the announcement unfolded the top notch people we encountered, along with their attitudes and knowledge of the industry, assured us we were making the right decision.
We believe that Slicehost and Rackspace are fantastic complements to each other. Our technology strengthens their position in the cloud hosting world. Their expertise, experience and resources enable us to improve our product and continue meeting our customers’ needs. Fear not loyal Slicehosters, we promise to keep doing what we’ve always done – listening to you and building a product that solves your problems. Now we have one of the largest and most respected names in the industry standing behind us. So please join us in celebrating this announcement, but not for too long. We’ve got to get back to work and have big plans ahead. As always, please send us your thoughts and questions. Thank you for your support!
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:30 PM Brendan
Congratulations guys! You rock.
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:30 PM Doug Parker
Congratulations to Slicehost!! A sensational move!! I look forward to seeing what the future brings!!!
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:31 PM Ben Reubenstein
Having worked with Rackspace on several projects, I can say that I am extremely excited by this. Keep up the good work, and congratulations.
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:32 PM Mac Apps
Nice, what do you have planned?
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:32 PM Mike Sax
Big congratulations Matt and Jason! As a Slicehost customer I’m a little nervous because the level of excellence can sometimes go down when bigger companies purchase smaller innovators. At the same time, it’s exciting and has the potential to bring Slicehost to a whole new level. My best wishes to the whole Slicehost team!
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:32 PM mj
Great news guys! To be honest I think it will be Rackspace who have to work hard to live up to one of the best names in hosting – Slicehost – have the best rep ever!
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:33 PM Trevor Turk
I’m a little nervous about this change, but I’ve been impressed with Rackspace whenever I’ve dealt with them. Congratulations on your successes thus far, and here’s to hoping that the best is yet to come!
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:33 PM stefan2904
Wow! Congratulations!
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:35 PM Tim
Does this mean pricing will change soon?
I ask because Rackspace, even though they are awesome and have greate customer support, are crazy expensive.
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:36 PM Andy Atkinson
First, congratulations to the slicehost team. Second, slicehost has differentiators like an API and excellent public tutorials/articles (PickledOnion ftw), I hope both of those things stick around, and those types of innovations are fostered by Rackspace.
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:37 PM Klaus Shoeffenberg
Great job guys, I’m so happy for your expansion. Rackspace is lucky to have you on board.
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:41 PM Duff OMelia
I love being a slicehost customer. I’m hopeful that the “Big Company” won’t spoil your excellent business.
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:43 PM Richard Henry
If anything Rackspace could learn a lot from you, especially in terms of the tutorials and ease of slice management. You guys rock, don’t change too much.
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:47 PM Wil
First, congrats on what must be a very happy bank account! You deserve it!
Second, how far away are we from the insane rate hikes that accompany the Rackspace brand?
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:53 PM Jeremy Pinnix
Congratulations
October 22nd, 2008 at 05:54 PM Rex Dixon
Congrats Matt!
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:00 PM Jim Fuller
and there I was moving from Rackspace to you guys …. and thinking I finally left that kind of thinking. I must say I am skeptical; I know Rackspace very well and I have all but good things to say of their technical team. I am however unhappy with their ever changing account managers, offering new customers significantly better deals, and generally their ‘mercedes’ price tag (for admittedly great support but not the best connectivity).
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:01 PM ch0wda
I’ve been a slicehost customer for over 18 months and this news does not make me excited. I wanted a hosting company that I have close access to, not some large corporation that has notable outages every ~6 months.
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:08 PM BradfordW
Having worked with RackSpace before, I’m not exactly thrilled…I think anyone who believes “things will stay the same” after an acquisition is in for a rude awakening. I’ll stick around, but at the slightest rocking of the boat I’m likely to go elsewhere. Actually, it kind of feels like I have a chip on my shoulder now. sigh Thanks for the memories guys!
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:10 PM Jeff
Congratulations guys! You deserve the wild success. Here’s hoping for many more great years to come.
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:14 PM Francis
I was a mosso customer for one hot second and their service is horrible. Their support is good but they couldn’t keep their “cloud” running and were lacking features that were pretty basic.
I found slicehost soon after and swooned at the speed and reliability. I’m glad you guys will have more resources but I fear over expansion and degradation of service.
I hope you guys retain control and direction of your company. I’m curious how your plans have changed since the acquisition and how this effects your next 5 and 10 year outlooks.
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:27 PM Adam
Congrats! Hope this doesnt completely kill your pricing model. Thats the main reason I dont use rackspace.
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:30 PM Ben
Congrats!
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:35 PM Mike Buchanan
Way to go guys!
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:36 PM Jim Fuller
and there I was moving from Rackspace to you guys …. and thinking I finally left that kind of thinking. I must say I am skeptical; I know Rackspace very well and I have all but good things to say of their technical team. I am however unhappy with their ever changing account managers, offering new customers significantly better deals, and generally their ‘mercedes’ price tag (for admittedly great support but not the best connectivity).
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:43 PM John
I can see a lot of good, but I can also see a lot of bad that can from this. As long as the prices remain the same and resource limits increase, I’m good with whoever owns it as long as the staff remains the same.
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:47 PM Edward S. Marshall
I’ve been here for 7 months now, and have been overjoyed with the availability and service I’ve received, especially for the price I’m paying.
So, I’m more than a little nervous about this, given the pricing model Rackspace has traditionally had, and the usual loss of “small company” feel when an acquisition like this happens.
That being said: if this gets us add-on SAN/iSCSI storage any time soon (I’m casually eying the JungleDisk announcement as well), count me in. :)
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:52 PM Hendry Lee
Congrats! That’s all I can say.
Best wishes for SH. Really expect that it would still offer the same experience, or even better.
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:58 PM Ashley Williams
Cool — at first I was a little nervous that the quality would go down, but I know Rackspace has a very good reputation.
The only thing I’m worried about now are your prices, you said you hope to give more value or or lower them, but Rackspace aren’t exactly know for their value — are you planning to discontinue the 256slice or anything? I hope not, I love recommending the 256slice to people who would normally choose a shared host.
Good luck! :)
October 22nd, 2008 at 07:02 PM Heri
First, congrats, that’s the best acquirer you could have got.
Echoing other users, I am on slicehost because of the price and also because of the “slice” product. hopes this doesn’t change for higher prices, otherwise I’ll have to go shopping again
October 22nd, 2008 at 07:18 PM Colin
My company uses Rackspace, and I’m a loyal Slicehost user for all my personal projects. In my life, you guys are the only relevant hosting companies. I have nothing but the utmost respect for both of you. Congratulations Slicehost!
October 22nd, 2008 at 07:19 PM Raymond Brigleb
Congratulations. Just want to reiterate the trepidation about pricing, but otherwise I’m very happy to hear this!
October 22nd, 2008 at 07:21 PM SuperJared
For those worried about pricing: we’ve lowered prices on the 2GB and up plans. Additionally, we no longer require a 3-month-minimum prepay on signup.
Feel free to drop into our chat if you want to talk with us:
http://chat.slicehost.com/
October 22nd, 2008 at 08:03 PM Don
What most of the above folks said, congrats. My experience with Rackspace has not been cheap, but you got what you paid for. Stay classy, Slicehost.
October 22nd, 2008 at 08:24 PM Brian
Congrats from a happy user. I suppose after all that time, and many phone calls and emails from San Antonio, I am finally becoming a rackspace customer too.
October 22nd, 2008 at 08:28 PM Vamsee
Congratulations! I hope you guys will keep rocking as hard as ever.
October 22nd, 2008 at 08:43 PM Erik
I concur wholeheartedly with the other commentators who warn you for stepping into the trap of Rackspace’s irritating “fanatical support”, equally irritating account managers and ridiculous pricing for firewall, backups, and dns services.
But pricing doesn’t really matter to me. The reason I chose Slicehost was because of its smallness, the excellent documentation, and raving recommendations from my fellow hacker buddies. “It just works”.
If Slicehost is like Ruby, Rackspace is like Cobol. Or if Slicehost is like the Apple Store, Rackspace is like Walmart.
I hope you guys have negotiated a big fat wall around your current Slicehost team and lock the door for nosy Rackspace staff who are going to rain on your parade
-and on the—currently- very happy Slicehost customers.A Slicehost Fan.
October 22nd, 2008 at 09:02 PM Mike
For all the reasons already mentioned, this is really disappointing news.
October 22nd, 2008 at 09:12 PM Dmitry
Congrats :)
What will this acquisition mean for the future of Slicehost? Are you going to continue offering the same services and packages or will we see some changes?
October 22nd, 2008 at 09:26 PM Ben Mc
This makes me nervous.
I’ve been through so many hosting mergers over the years now that I know only problems come of it.
Are the servers moving to a new data center? Is the interface going to change? Who will be providing support? Will the chat go away? Will the awesome tutorials go away? What will happen to the beautiful simplicity of your control panel?
In only ask these questions because I’ve been in situations TWICE now where I have lost all of the above during an acquisition of my hosting company.
I finally chose Slicehost for what it is, and now you could become one of the huge providers I decided NOT to join when choosing Slicehost.
Of course, congratulations for your successes, but I would be lying to say that I’m not extremely nervous.
October 22nd, 2008 at 09:50 PM Andrea
I chose Slicehost for pricing and the good reviews. The only thing I know about Rackspace is that they are expensive… I’m now quite worried.
October 22nd, 2008 at 09:56 PM Eric B.
Of course, I’m happy for the Slicehost team, but very concerned about the future of my hosting. I went with Slicehost because of what is was NOT as much as what it was. Hoping that the acquisition doesn’t affect what Slicehost has become, expecting it will. Shoot. =\
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 PM SuperJared
Andrea, hopefully the lowered prices will mitigate your concern. Our service will be the same, but we will focus on new features more, like the Shared IPs we announced today.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 PM SuperJared
Ben mc, to answer your questions:
None of our servers are moving—we’re keeping the datacenters we currently have.
The SliceManager stays.
The same guys as before; Paul, Mike, Chris, me, etc. The chat stays.
No way! Those are too big an asset to remove. Expect many more articles in the future.
We aim to keep it simple, even with new features as they arise.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 PM David
Congratulations. The guys got there pay off and that’s what business is about, but most likely Rack Space will trash the company and the guys will end up leaving that is usually what happens when well run small companies get acquired. Rackspace is a rip off, so is there Mosso service. Hopefully they won’t change the pricing of Slicehost, I’d be stuck going to Media Temple or a similar offering.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:15 PM macalba
From a selfish perspective: Bummer!!! I went with Slicehost because it wasn’t one of the big guys that loses sight of the individual customer.
I’ll let time be the judge.
All the best.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 PM David
This looks like what Rackspace wanted Slicehost for to have a reasonably priced solution for there Masso service: https://cloud.rackspace.com/cloudservers.jsp
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 PM Joey
Why am I finding out about this via hackernews and not an e-mail?
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 PM Lee Joramo
I think this is Great News.
Over the past year, I have been moving most of my web sites from RackSpace to SliceHost. I loved RackSpace, but the flexibility of building custom Slices per client (or group of similar clients) brought me to SliceHost.
I have used RackSpace for over 8 years. They have been the BEST computer technology support experience I have every had. I started with computers back in 1980.
Interestingly enough, at the same time I started migrating to SliceHost, I also started moving email accounts to WebMail.us, which RackSpace also purchased and renamed MailTrust.com. I have been very happy with that transition.
Cheers!
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:14 PM Scott Beale
Congratulations! Laughing Squid has been using Rackspace for our server hosting since 1999 and they have been amazing. This appears to be a perfect fit for both companies. We are really looking forward to checking out some of the cloud hosting options.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 PM Mike D
I can’t think of one example of a big corporate company (no matter what the pedigree) taking over a small innovative one and the services improving. I can think of many examples of the opposite. The suits are in charge now but I’m sure everything will be fine ;)
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:19 AM Hyperial
I moved from Mosso because of their bad service and price/performance/resource/Compute Cycles ratio, etc… I actually only have like 7 sites left of Mosso.
Now, I’ve never use Rackspace due to there being no real “firm” pricing right on their website, you gotta get “quotes” and stuff for your own “customized solution”, and I don’t feel like going through crap like that. I like Slicehost cause all pricing information is very straightfoward and easy to understand.
All I ask, and I’m sure I echo what some others are saying…
1. Don’t change (for the worse), keep things the way they are and truly improve upon the service over time. Don’t force things down people’s throats without “community” feedback that aren’t truly good/fair to us, the end-users.
2. Don’t convert resources to “compute cycle” type units… That’s the 1 big reason I, and many others, left Mosso.
3. Keep the “homey” feeling… I feel like this place is just a bunch of friends who really care about others, help each other out, give advice, don’t judge, or put down newbs like some other forums do.
I know we all don’t know exact terms of the acquisition, but I hope Slicehost staff stood firm on preserving what we’ve become accustomed to.
I did notice bigger Slices (8 & 16gb Slices) so that should be cool as well as the possibility of more diverse data center options, bigger more powerful servers, bandwidth redundancy, etc.
In my opinion, the Slicehost philosophy WILL grow Rackspace/Mosso, but it will be slower if Rackspace/Mosso tries to exert themselves on Slicehost.
I’ll just cross my fingers and pray that things don’t change for the worse.
One thing I do hope to see sooner rather than later is Window 2003/8 Slices. :-)
October 23rd, 2008 at 01:33 AM SoSad
So sad. I knew this was all too good to last.
Rackspace… Every slicehost customer knew about them already, and purposefully and willfully chose slicehost instead. This cannot possibly help.
And for the slicehost owner… RAX stock has gone from $12 to $5 in 3 months. I hope you got cash, otherwise by the time your stock blackout period has ended you might have nothing.
You worked hard and this is especially sad because I’m pretty certain you would have grown on your own to become way more successful than Rackspace ever was or will be, and you would have owned it all.
The corporate newspeak has already begun. Can’t wait for the quarterly earnings pressure of a public company to start forcing myopic tactical decisions that blow the long term success of slicehost.
Hooray! So, so sad.
October 23rd, 2008 at 01:33 AM Andrew
I doubt it that acquisition will be good for us (just bought my plan 3 weeks ago)
October 23rd, 2008 at 01:52 AM Carl Mercier
Congrats guys! I’ve been a customer of yours since day 1, literally and you are, by far, the best hosting company I’ve ever dealt with. Keep it this way!
October 23rd, 2008 at 02:55 AM Eric Ferraiuolo
I feel weird about this whole thing. I really liked the fact the Slicehost was this awesome small company that provided a great service. I’m too worried about the pressures from a public company on the customer(dev)-oriented services Slicehost provides.
Also I’m a Jungle Disk user and have been for 2 years or something. This announcement was a double-whammy for me! I would hope I would have read about this in two emails, one from each company, but not it was on a blog; that’s not cool.
October 23rd, 2008 at 04:14 AM slicematt
Thanks for the comments and congratulations everyone. Too much to address here, but we hope to take questions in a video session next week. In the meantime feel free to email me directly if you have concerns matt@slicehost or call me 314.266.3502
October 23rd, 2008 at 04:48 AM Mattijs Naus
Congratulations to the both!
October 23rd, 2008 at 04:48 AM tinomen
looking forward to the new fanatically overpriced service. ;)
October 23rd, 2008 at 05:43 AM aroon
I hope this is good news but I have no idea to be honest. I’ve never had to interact with rackspace directly but whenever I hear anything about them its always something bad. I’ve been very happy with my slicehost experience and I really hope it stays that way because you guys provide an amazing service and I would hate to lose it!
Keep it real guys =]
October 23rd, 2008 at 06:39 AM D
Not Rackspace….....
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:11 AM Ron
While I’m very happy for the Slicehost team
- you’ve built a great service and deserve to cash in on it -this scares me to death. We chose Slicehost in part because it WASN’T Rackspace.Don’t mess this up, please. In particular, don’t raise prices. Customers, us included, would start leaving in droves.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:15 AM Ron
Uh, I had no idea this markup engine would put a strikeout through a sentence if preceeded and followed by two dashes. That wasn’t my intention at all. So let me repeat, without the incredibly confusing strikeout: you’ve built a great service and deserve to cash in on it.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 AM Justin
Congrats!
You guys have worked hard at this and it shows. The service is the best, bar none.
As earlier posters said, please keep:
the pricing competitive the rock-solid infrastructure the great service and interfaces the helpful tutorials
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 PM Michael Koukoullis
Dear SliceHost – Love being a customer of yours. The tech and the support you guys offer is second to none! Congrats on the acquisition!
Dear RackSpace – Okay. I am a little concerned so listen up. Don’t go fixing what ain’t broke! Mess it up and I’m out of here!
October 23rd, 2008 at 01:01 PM Alex Gordon
I have to echo what has been said above. This acquisition scares me. I hope somebody can answer my questions.
1. Can you guaranty that prices won’t rise in the coming months? I know you’ve lowered prices but what about next year? I’ve seen rackspace’s prices, they’re ludicrous.
2. Will you be moving servers? Can I expect downtime?
3. Will currently free services, for example DNS, stay free?
And most importantly: 4. Why did I hear this on digg, instead of in an email? The least you could have done is to send a newsletter out.
October 23rd, 2008 at 02:19 PM PickledOnion
Alex (and others),
No we cannot guarantee they won’t rise – but if you had asked that a week ago the answer would be the same. There is no way we can guarantee no price rises. However, what I can guarantee is that we don’t intend to raise prices.
Rackspace has higher prices as they have a fully managed service (the customer support literally logs into your server and administers it for you. If you want a file to have different permissions they can do that for you).
We are a fully unmanaged service (and have always been one) so we won’t do that for you. We will assist if you are not sure how to do it but, at the end of the day, you administer your own Slice. That is the main reason for the price differences.
Your Slices will not move from the servers they are on. And no, the servers are not moving either :)
DNS will stay exactly the same as it is now – there will be no charge.
The question about an email notification is difficult – we have had some people say they will leave if they ever get an email from us… We can’t win on this one I am afraid.
What I can say is that we will be following up with more information and podcasts to help explain all the questions.
Everyone here at Slicehost is fully on board with this – no one is losing their job, no one is leaving, no one is thinking of leaving. We want to stay the same and offer the same service we always have. We also believe that will be the case.
Of course I understand the concerns but until some time has passed and we can show you that it will be the same Slicehost but with even more cool toys all I can say is please hang in there.
As said before, please come to our chatroom if you want to chat to us about it (http://chat.slicehost.com)
PickledOnion
October 23rd, 2008 at 02:24 PM Ken Hudson
Congratulations to you guys – I’m sure this will be fantastic for you from a financial perspective. Personally, I’m very worried, though. I’m sure your intentions are good but what I’ve seen over and over with acquisitions is that the staff of the acquired company gets dissatisfied with their new owners very quickly – and they take their money and leave. The loyal customers that made the acquired company successful are left holding the bag.
My financial future is dependent, to some degree, on the quality of my hosting company. If you’re not good I look bad – it’s that simple. My hosting company is an extension of my company. I’m not sure Rackspace fits the bill.
Finally, let me just say that finding out about this on Google News instead of directly from you is a super big disappointment. I’d say the downhill slide has already started…
October 23rd, 2008 at 02:44 PM Levent
Congratulations! My fingers are crossed!
October 23rd, 2008 at 03:10 PM Ben
Time to shop again.
October 23rd, 2008 at 03:33 PM pikapi
I’m nervous about the acquisition; SliceHost is known for not overselling capacity – will the addition of capacity and features of the services cause the host server to overload? I really like the small community over here; so I hope that Rackspace will not change what’s not broken.
October 23rd, 2008 at 03:45 PM Ken Hudson
I’ve been giving this some more thought. Here’s my main concern: Slicehost seems to have been founded and lead by people whose goal was to build the best possible hosting environment for developers. Rackspace, on the other hand, is a publicly traded company with one goal – increase shareholder value. Rackspace will make its decisions based on what will increase shareholder value not on what will be good for developers. Let’s just hope that there’s overlap! The new pricing is a good start…
October 23rd, 2008 at 04:07 PM Colin
Well, the entrepreneur in me says congratulations. You saw an area of the hosting market that was not being catered to and you offered a superior product. You worked hard, built a great business, and it is only fair that you get what you deserve.
The customer in me says oh great, another unique and creative company swallowed by a large cooperation. I am sure they will promise you that they wont change anything and after all the paper work is signed their agenda will come out. You will work with them for a while and eventually get fed up and leave. The only good news is that you are going to be a subsidiary. Hopefully Rackspace is smart enough to leave you guys alone. Collaborate where it makes sense and continue to let the Slicehost community foster.
Rackspace, I hope you realize that the type of customers Slicehost attracts are not afraid to pick up and leave if you start screwing around with a business model that is clearly working. It took me so long to find a hosting provider that I actually respect; please do not make me start looking again.
Congratulations! / :(
October 23rd, 2008 at 04:37 PM Ben
Good luck in the new space guys. !
October 23rd, 2008 at 05:20 PM Sweet and Sour
ugh. So in a few weeks the small slice prices will go up for $5 or $10 because you know, small slices are not worth it, its those new big 8gb and 16gb slices that pay the bills. then a few months after that, another $5 or $10 dollar increase… in a few months all the small slice owners will be squeezed out because rackspaces wants more profit.
rackspace have dirty fingers and touch everything. they dont know HOW to leave well enough alone.
slicehost is great, but I’m going to start looking elsewhere before rackspace want to own my credit card.
this has been great for the owners, but bad for the customers.
October 23rd, 2008 at 05:24 PM Hugo
Contratulations! I’m excited about the future.
October 23rd, 2008 at 06:56 PM sgarza
Congrats to all the team, im looking forward to see whats coming next :D
October 23rd, 2008 at 07:46 PM Dave
Congrats on the payday, but this worries me.
I like most came to Slicehost because of a horrible experience with a previous hosting company. Most host would consistently over promise and under deliver, but Slicehost was the first to do the opposite for me.
Just about every hosting co I’ve worked with has been bought out and thoroughly ruined. I hear people saying “time to start looking” but I can’t really think of any other provider I’d rather be with.
Are we going to remain Slicehost customers? or will the company be rebranded as a Mosso product?
Also, can you talk a bit about what the shared IP thing is you’re mentioned?
Thx.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:06 PM Ben Mc
Thank you for answering my questions. With my big concerns out the of the way, I look forward to adding more slices and moving over more of my customers.
I think you can see from the comments on this post that one of the most important parts of hosting is service. It’s not about the technology so much as long as it’s supported fanatically.
If I have to talk to an overseas call center to get help for my slice, I’m definitely gone. Been there, done that, almost lost my whole business. I may be new to SliceHost, but the service so far has been better than anywhere else I’ve been.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:14 PM Jeff Kramer
Does this mean that customers in Texas will start having to pay sales tax? That was one of the reasons I picked Slicehost over other options, it amounts to an >%8 price increase for me.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 PM BD
Because of this acquisition, I am now unfortunately looking for another solution.
October 24th, 2008 at 02:27 AM Ouch
I too, chose Slicehost because they were not a big company, offered reasonable prices, and provided excellent personal customer service.
If Rackspace leaves Slicehost alone then we’re ok. Otherwise, sayonara.
October 24th, 2008 at 03:46 AM Eugene
Like others here, my worry is really about autonomy. Yes, the new parent company may allow you to keep going as-is for awhile, but does the deal maintain autonomy such that you can keep going as Slicehost without being sliced and diced away?
October 24th, 2008 at 04:02 AM Klaus
I’m not worried… I think everything will be just fine.
October 24th, 2008 at 05:03 AM jck
Wow. The week I decide to ditch colocation permanently, I stumble onto this post. I feel very much like everyone else here, pleased for the Slicehost team and concerned for the future of the service.
October 24th, 2008 at 08:50 PM Jeff
As a huge fan of Slicehost, I have massive reservations about the buyout by Rackspace. You may consider Rackspace passionate and competent, but I’ve found them arrogant and costly – too costly to ever recommend to a client.
I predict a changes in plans and pricing to come in line with Rackspace’s gouging.
For me, this news is worse than the stock market crash.
October 24th, 2008 at 09:02 PM Jeff
Quick addition…
The fact that Slicehost has been put on the Rack only proves how awesome y’all are.
Don’t give in, no matter how much pain and torture they inflict.
October 25th, 2008 at 01:44 AM Pete
Rackspace is the one that got the deal buying Slicehost! I hope you guys asked for double what they offered. They primarily acquired talent – not a smaller business. Congratulations on the compensation payout. A big fat Ditto to all concerns. Test over time will tell.
October 25th, 2008 at 02:45 AM James
Way to go. Comment babies go back to slasdot.
October 25th, 2008 at 06:59 PM Jason
We are working on setting up a Q&A time, should be next week, when we can address all of the concerns and questions in one place. We’ll make sure to post info about when and where both here and in the forum so keep an eye out. In short, this really is a good thing for all parties, slicehost customers, the slicehost crew, and rackspace.
The general consensus from the anxiety I see here is that people seemed to be really concerned about the small little hosting company that was the best kept secret in hosting (we flew pretty low under the radar), is going to get ruined by the big bad corporate giant. The reality is that while certainly rackspace is a huge company compared to us, slicehost has in short order grown quite large and we are growing faster every day. For slicehost, this raises a huge number of issues around growing our operations fast enough in a stable way and this is a key motivator for the acquisition. Rackspace brings a huge amount to the table for us simply in terms of equipment purchasing, datacenter space, network capacity and managing physical infrastructure. They do those things infinitely better than us, and personally, I couldn’t be more pumped to stop worrying about touching physical machines every day so I can focus on improving our services.
October 25th, 2008 at 07:50 PM Daniel
It’s a shame that Slicehost have sold out. I joined SH quite soon after they started and loved the level of friendly service, but I think that may go now in exchange for Rackspace’s straight to business, high sales pressure attitude. I’ll stay for now, but it won’t be long before RS start hiking prices, introducing 3 lines of support you have to get through before your ticket is looked at, and migrating servers into their own DC…
Nevertheless, congratulations Matt and Jason
October 26th, 2008 at 12:35 AM David Cintron
I like Slicehost and until this announcement had never heard of Rackspace. Guess that means I’m small change in terms of a customer (I am only on a 256 slice). Having moved from an extremely limiting shared hosting company to all the beauty that is Slicehost I think I’ll stick around as long as prices remain competitive and the great staff sticks around (and produces podcasts!). Congrats dudes.
October 26th, 2008 at 06:02 PM Dax
Congrats. ++ SH & RS will make a great pair. Hope this means the service will get even better.
Dax & MT CH team, Croatia
October 26th, 2008 at 08:11 PM Dr. Mike Wendell
I was looking over your site and just noticed the news about the purchase. Your company gets talked about a lot on the WordPress Multiuser forums and I was going to give you guys a try as we need a new DNS provider off site. Now I’ll be looking elsewhere. We have large portions of the Rackspace IP blocks banned for continued spam and abuse with little to no followup from them. Now I’m wondering if I’ll have to block your IP addresses as well simple to protect my own clients.
I wonder where things will be six months down the road.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:26 AM slicematt
Dr Mike – email sent for more info, we’ll determine why this hasn’t been addressed.
October 27th, 2008 at 07:30 PM alex
It’s ur choice, guys. Hopefully you’ve thought everything over. Just, if everything stays the same (including pricing) and you make the same money, why would they purchase the company?
October 27th, 2008 at 07:47 PM jason
alex (and others)
Many of your specific questions are addressed in this forum thread-
http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2518
October 27th, 2008 at 08:14 PM A Customer
Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in …
Having utilized RackSpace for a startup (and then left), I’m very hesitant about this acquisition. Their prices became very very high for managed services, though what SliceHost provides is completely different. I’m wary of what sort of policies RackSpace will enforce on the SliceHost team, and echo a lot of sentiments here about compute cycles, quality of support, resource allocation etc.
Hopefully things stay the same…but they rarely ever do. I’ll be eagerly watching, and will remain a customer for now.
Congratulations nonetheless. :)
October 27th, 2008 at 08:24 PM Gabe da Silveira
Congrats to you guys. I think this is a perfect match if ever there was one. Your services are very synergistic with what Rackspace provides and I think if they do a minimum not to screw things up everyone will be in good hands.
There seem to be a fair amount of negative Rackspace commentary, but I have as much hosting experience as anyone (15-20 hosts over the past 10 years for a wide variety of types of sites, and worked for an agency reselling hosting services to hundreds of clients). Rackspace fanatical service is not just a marketing slogan. Yes you pay through the nose, but you get support that is head and shoulders above anything else I’ve experienced in the industry. If someone has a story about how Rackspace provided bad service I’d love to hear it. The fact they are expensive just highlights the complementary nature of Rackspace and Slicehost services. Would Rackspace blow the brand equity by turning Slicehost into something they already have in the Rackspace brand? Despite a lot of programmers’ disdain for upper level management, trust me when I say the suits are not that stupid. Worst case the red tape increases and the passion slowly fades from the Slicehost team, eventually leading to decreased innovation, but staying independent wouldn’t guarantee that wouldn’t happen anyway.
More power to you guys.
October 27th, 2008 at 08:34 PM Tony
What’s sad is that you guys could have been the next Rackspace, but “built for developers” as your home page always proudly stated. Like most people here, I hope this acquisition is not the beginning of the end for Slicehost—but I fear the passion will be sucked away. We’ve all seen it before.
October 27th, 2008 at 09:53 PM Jonathan Nelson
congrats slicehost! you guys deserve every bit of it. thanks for being such a kick butt hosting company :)
October 27th, 2008 at 10:28 PM atc
Good news, but I’m nervous about the future. Hopefully Rackspace don’t think they know best and change things around too much. I’ve not had one gripe since moving to slicehost over a year ago and I hope you guys continue to gain the success you deserve.
Roll on UK-based Slices! :)
October 27th, 2008 at 11:03 PM Tim Molendijk
Congrats and keep up the good work!
October 27th, 2008 at 11:05 PM Jonathan
Congratulations! This acquisition will definitely bring in more business.
But I do hope Rackspace won’t change how things are run on Slicehost.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:10 PM Darren
Oh No! I have been nothing but pleased… in fact Ecstatic about the service I have recieved from slicehost. The prices are the best. The service is the best. I love everything about slicehost. But with another company pushing it can only damage what I chose slicehost for.
Like many others above. Ive been with enough companies to know how rare it is to find one that doesn’t budge on the quality of service to its customers.
Please don’t change. You were well on your way to being the best developer hosting service available. I can only pray that remains.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:30 PM A
Slicehost had the opportunity to perpetuate its exemplary culture, rather than be swallowed up by another. From the perspective of the tech economy, this acquisition is really disappointing news.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:52 PM MaTT
Congratulation for both! great great service!... Don’t forget one of your vision that made me get here… ” We are not a greedy company…” or something like that…
Hope you can keep the idealism in the middle of capitalism…
cheers!
October 28th, 2008 at 04:55 AM Dash
Congratulations to you both. I have always been a very happy customer and I hope the things will remain the same and get better as the time goes. Would be great if there are any UPCOMING features in the offering to share with us!
Cheers – Enjoy the happy moments!
October 28th, 2008 at 05:11 AM sasamat
The overall mood of the above 100+ comments is pure poignancy.
Dear slicehost founders: I do hope you recognize the remarkableness of this fact and the unique place you are presently in. You are loved by a group of the hardest critics in the world; you’ve lucked into an important meme, and (all credit to you) followed through and delivered on it. I, for one, have been incredibly impressed over the last 6+ months with everything about slicehost. I really like the ethics, the aesthetics, the choice of distros, and the whole ensemble of wiki, email support and great stability. You have not only been wonderfully functional, but also been wonderfully cool.
Your loyal subjects are not angry, or upset, just achingly sad. It’s all there in the comments.
I’ve watched the rackhost announcement and am a tad scared—-Like many others, I’m trying to leave the slow dead hand of buzzword compliant, mba driven, corporate kleptocracy, not run into its sweaty open arms. The last 180 days of global turmoil have shown precisely where that leads.
Please remind your new owners that should they screw up, a gaggle of teenage kids armed with rails, XEN or vmware ESXi and a thousand no name white box servers will replace you. Forget fanatical support—what really matters is love.
Good luck!
October 28th, 2008 at 08:08 AM Ben
Amazing guys, I’ve been here 21 days and my word things just keep getting better and better! Great tutorials, great instant help and a host that really stops me from worrying about my site and after all that you get acquired by Rackspace!
What is next? (I can’t wait to see)
Thank you so much
October 28th, 2008 at 11:45 AM raggi
yup, congrats.
October 28th, 2008 at 12:09 PM Marcus
Well, from looking at Rackspace’s website it seems pretty obvious why they bought slicehost and what slicehost has become.
On this page http://www.rackspace.com/solutions/cloud/index.php the say that Cloud Servers are coming soon. If you click on the link then it says you can get them at the moment from slicehost. Seems pretty obvious to me that Slicehost will just become the Cloud Server offering from rackspace and will disappear very quickly as a separate entity.
October 28th, 2008 at 02:11 PM afewtips.com
Congrats to you but nervousness for me. I hope this is great for the users.
I have loved being a Slicehost customer and always worried that my secret would be discovered by the rest of the world. Now it has happened and I hope it doesn’t turn into a nightmare.
Slicehost has always been reliable, fast, very reasonably priced and the support and community have pushed it over the edge for me.
STAY THAT WAY !! Please :)
October 28th, 2008 at 03:33 PM ComAge
Congratulations for sure! BUT… having colocated servers with Rackspace in the past my concern is you will adopt their top drawer price structure. The reason Slicehost rocks so much is the superb product, excellent service and realistic (simple) price structure. Rackspace pricing is CRAZY HIGH! Hope you remain humble – and this is not the beginning of the end of a wonderful era in Virtual Servers.
Oh and as far as “fanatical support” goes, isn’t Slicehost a place for DEVELOPERS? I mean, we can do our own support pretty much… is that not why the pricing structure was so inviting?
October 28th, 2008 at 10:41 PM Doug
I’m not happy with it. I’ll be moving the rest of my sites over to Linode over the coming months.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:53 PM slicematt
Doug – shot you an email, please get in touch to discuss.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:56 PM K. Shepard
Doug and all of the others—Wait and see what happens. This may be a good thing for Slicehost customers!!! Stop being a DEBBIE DOWNER and look for the good in this.
If, after all, this does turn out badly for you…. move your slices to Linode and whine to them until they get bought out by another big fish…OH wait….maybe there’s a reason they haven’t been bought by another “big fish”??? hmmm…
So what exactly aren’t you happy with? Has your service changed? Are you experiencing problems? Or maybe you’re just pouting? Stop being a baby…do you realize how childish you sound?
Congrats Slicehost….keep on doing your thing!!
October 30th, 2008 at 01:02 PM Anurag
I agree with Shepard. I was planning to buy a slice here in next few months when my pet project becomes staging worthy. Matt has been assuring that datacenter will remain same, and people would remain same. I’m positive that the services and slicehost enthusiasm would also remain same.
October 30th, 2008 at 02:57 PM Liam
I am a Slicehost customer. Great for you guys but not for me. PLEASE keep your solution very simple, automated, cheap and at the high standard it is now—else Bye Bye Rackspace….
November 4th, 2008 at 07:29 PM Lee
http://www.mosso.com/cloudservers.jsp
Bye bye.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:14 PM John F
Roughly 3/4 hosting companies I have been with over the past 13 years have been bought out, and then gone right downhill. Hence me looking again now. But I’ve heard too many complaints from friends about Rackspace, and their pricing structure, so will be looking elsewhere. Good luck though guys, hope you can buck the trend.
November 6th, 2008 at 09:07 AM Mark
Rackspace? So are you going to charge $ 400 for an account?
November 14th, 2008 at 01:02 PM Dimitri
So let me quote from http://www.mosso.com/cloudservers.jsp:
“Cloud Servers, powered by Slicehost technology, will be integrated with Mosso and Rackspace offerings, giving you managed solutions tailored for IT departments”
Managed? Starting with the same price (they say $20) and specifications?
November 18th, 2008 at 12:22 PM Jasper
well done people!
“Selling the company was not in the cards. So what changed?” - big money comin’ :)
now go and slash Peacy Dandy for stealing your ‘slices’.
February 11th, 2009 at 09:10 AM Fyre Vortex
Well… would choose Slicehost/Mosso if they had PayPal as a payment but… :\ They don’t. Wish they did though.
March 21st, 2009 at 10:25 AM Mark Aberdeen
If RackSpace take over their renowned support then this is great news all round. If they treat it like a poor, second class brother then it wont work.