If you are in the market for a fully managed web hosting solution, then you would be wise to check out RackSpace for your managed hosting needs.

On the web hosting scene since 1998 and based in San Antonio, Texas, with an office in the UK, RackSpace has garnered a reputation for some of the best managed hosting available. Let’s examine what they have to offer, and why or they may or may not be a good fit for your web hosting needs.

First of all, RackSpace specializes in managed web hosting. They take care of all the details, from the hardware, software maintenance and productivity issues concerning the website. They also offer managed colocation plans, which allow owners to have some input into their sites, while still having the bulk of the technical aspects left to RackSpace.

As part of their managed hosting plans, RackSpace takes care of items like software and hardware updates, troubleshooting of problems, security patches, monitoring of sites, administering, backup data, upgrading, and customization of servers and operating systems.

RackSpace has fast become the leader in Cloud Hosting solutions as well. This segment of the web hosting industry has experienced much growth in the last couple of years, and promises to be the future of web hosting, offering vast resources for lower costs, available when you need them. A list of RackSpace’s cloud customers reads like a Who’s Who of American and world businesses, including such names as Wendy’s , The Boston Celtics, J.C.Penney, Symantec, TechCrunch, FreshBooks, NFL Red Zone, Dartmouth College, and the American Red Cross, to name but a few.

Cloud sites, cloud servers and cloud files services are available, and the possibilities are too numerous to mention here. The price breaks that come with services of this type of managed hosting are significant, and bear looking into.

RackSpace offers what they fondly refer to as ‘fanatical support”, (they’ve even trademarked the term!) and this is available by phone, live chat, and email 24/7. As a company that prides itself on taking care of all of its customer’s needs, it’s not a surprise that their customer service is top-notch.

They offer a money back guarantee on their promise of 100% uptime, made possible by their redundancy of servers, cloud solutions and under-utilization.

RackSpace would be a great choice for a company looking to outsource all their hosting needs into a managed solution. If you’re looking into cloud hosting, this would be an especially good choice. They have plans for managed private clouds, dedicated servers, colocation, ecommerce solutions, SaaS applications and much more.

Who this is not the best choice for, are smaller sites that have not yet found the need to maintain large files or databases, or have not yet reached significant levels of web traffic.

Those whose needs match what has been described above, would do well to investigate RackSpace further!