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r/cloudcomputing•
linuxdev2

Rackspace free programs $600/yr credit for developers, and ~$2000/ month credit for startups - reviews / experience?

I was chatting with Rackspace support for my web startup when they told me about these offers:

developer+ : http://www.rackspace.com/blog/rackspace-developer-program-for-developers-by-developers/ and https://developer.rackspace.com/
Offers $50 of credit per month for free for 12 months.

Startups: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/startup
Offers £1,325 (~ $2045 as of today) of credit per month for free for 12 months if you are a proper startup and are willing to enroll in a startup accelerator program through Rackspace.

At http://www.rackspace.co.uk/startup/sign-up scroll down the page to point 4.1 to verify and see any limits, details, etc.

This is IMO significantly far ahead of AWS free tier, Google Cloud Free trial and many other crippled free tiers.

For the startup program however, the catch is that you have to apply to be mentored by one of the dozens of accelerators / mentors that are listed on the front page and probably work towards a few regulatory compliances.

The one downside I see would be that maybe Rackspace costs a little more than the others in the longer term, but if you get decent funding after the first year, it should not be a problem.

The developer program though should be worth a try for anyone.

If anyone has tried the developer+ program and has cancelled after 12 months due to having no more funds, is there some downside other than simply shutting down the account?

What have been your experiences?

Posted Feb 27, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

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josenilocm•

Aws has credits programs for start-ups that go beyond the free tier. Search for "activate".

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bytesandbots•

To add to that, they give 100$ credits to start with on activate and also through many other start up programs. Most start up accelerator and incubators have partnered with AWS to provide $10k credits for two years validity which I think is a better deal than the one at Rackspace.

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linuxdev2OP•

although I cannot use this info in my current office, this is great info for future startups. Many thanks!

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linuxdev2OP•

thanks for this info !

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letseatlunch•

If cost is a factor for you, which it is with most startups, then avoid rackspace. I used rackspace for the past 4 years and recently switched over to AWS. It's like night and day. Multiple times I reached out to rackspace explaining that there were other services that costed less but provided betters servers which eventually led me to leaving. After the first 12 months you're going to get hard with the monthly fees and really these credits aren't going to cover all that much with rackspace. Additionally after the 12 months there isn't going to be any leyway they're going to charge you what ever they can.

AWS also offers a wider range of server configurations. They have a 'free' micro server tier which allows you to spin up small servers for this and that which can be scaled up to larger servers if needed. These are great for startups when you just need a server running something but don't want to pay an arm and a leg. with rackspace you can't just spin up another server because each one cost so much, you'll go over your credit after just a few.

I know I have a bit of a bias because my experience with rackspace was so terrible but I'm just trying to warn a fellow redditor that eventually you'll want to migrate off of rackspace and for me migrating was a pain and i wish i has just started with AWS in the first place.

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linuxdev2OP•

hmmm.

This means at the very least, maybe using this for hourly servers and testing out Rackspace features is a good idea?

I haven't used Rackspace so I don't know the pricing. Thanks for the info, though.

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