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Comment by AJ007 | Hacker News Reader

I've used SL in the past and have had business associates use them as well. I experienced nothing but problems, and regularly hear complaints from those who still use it.

This may just be a case of IBM needing to acquire companies to add revenue to their financial statements.

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That's strange. They're the #1 dedicated hosting provider used by YC-funded startups. They have a reputation as the best facilities, best private network, best control panel and best support staff you can get with rented hardware. They've swapped failed hardware for me in under an hour at 3AM their time, recovered data from a corrupt disk for me at no charge, their reliability and network is generally excellent... what are the complaints you hear?

I agree, SoftLayer seems to provide great performance for us at HealthPost.

I had the opposite experience. I used them for years and received prompt support, even getting direct to a sysadmin over the phone. I also regularly received up to 50% off their advertised prices just by doing a little negotiating.

Of course I say all this as an AWS customer, as the value flexibility far outweighed the value of support to me. Also, the last time I checked, You had to go through a standard server ordering form process to get a cloud server up and running.

When I explored using SL a year ago, you could already use their API to provision cloud servers. It took quite a bit more time than EC2 (10 minutes?) to have the server provisioned and running (back then) though.

Here's a counterdote: I've been using them since they were The Planet and have been very happy. I've wedged my machine a few times and their support is great, too.

I can't believe you're even talking about the same company. This runs contrary to everything I believe.

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