Rackspace Story: Gareth Thompson

Being the person behind @RackspaceUK has its perks. For example, I get the privilege to meet and talk to our amazing customers (that’s you!) over Twitter. Like Gareth Thompson, aka @CSSGareth. Here is his Rackspace Story.

How about we start by you telling us a bit about your business?
Of course! I own a successful web development agency called [codepotato] that specialises in providing solutions for firms in the financial industry. Predominantly we work with financial advisers from the UK, but we've also recently won some contracts with the likes of LV= and other financial product providers. On the most part we're building and extending WordPress but have written a number of custom web-apps all of which are hosted with yourselves!

Awesome! So what made you start using the Cloud in the first place, and how has it benefited you?
That's a tough question, mainly because I can't remember exactly when it was that I started seeing the benefits of this new-fangled hosting technology that was the cloud. Perhaps the fact I can remember when Rackspace's cloud sites feature was called "mosso" shows how long ago it was that I started using this technology! I'm sure I don't need to run through the benefits of the cloud again, but for me, it was peace of mind. Knowing that I could partner with a hosting provider well known for being awesome and with experience by the bucket-load, there was one clear winner!

What made you choose Rackspace?
Experience, testimonials and bad experiences with other hosting providers. Ultimately the main driver for moving across to Rackspace was the fact that service from another top cloud provider (who shall remain nameless) dropped to new lows. Despite their promises and uptime guarantees, they were as reliable as a chocolate teapot! I spent roughly a month in evenings and weekends researching and comparing VPS providers in the UK, and eventually took the plunge and went with Rackspace.

Although technically there was a year where I didn't have any active sites hosted on your platform, I would say I’ve been using Rackspace products for around 4 - 5 years.

Which of our products do you use?
I use both your current and old-gen server flavours and one of the most loved features of mine is your automated backup solution. Initially, I was put off by the fact it was something I had to install myself on my servers, but once again, your documentation meant I could fit it around running my business and it soon became clear how deliberately simple you had made the process.

My favourite product is your Linux VPS. I mean, could you make it any simpler? Clients have been blown away by how quick I’ve been able to setup servers through you. That's got to be a valid enough reason to make it my favourite product.

What does Fanatical Support mean to your business?
You cannot put a price on getting top support every time you need it. Like 3am in the morning after a long night coding and suddenly a mission critical server drops out. There's only a handful of hosting companies that I know of that offer support like yourselves, and it's a breath of fresh-air. To me, good support should be easy to get to, fast, friendly and knowledgable. It became very clear within a few days of signing up with yourselves that your team covered all of those points, and I'm proud to say that I still receive that level of service, even today. From a business point of view, knowing that I can rely on the RS team means that I can reassure clients and potential partners that there's a whole wealth (excuse the deliberate pun!) of knowledge and expertise looking after their mission-critical web-applications.

Amazing. Thanks for sharing your Rackspace story with us, Gareth!

If you would like to share your Rackspace story, send an email to twitter@rackspace.co.uk.