Established in 1998, for greater than 20 years Redstation has been offering dedicated servers for mission-critical companies for its countrymen and world viewers alike. Today, Redstation manages 1000’s of servers, hosts 1000’s of internet sites, e-mail accounts and different purposes for shoppers from greater than 150 counties all through the world. They exist as part of iomart Group Plc (UK’s main info expertise and cloud computing firm) and their most important workplace is comfortably located in Glasgow.
They personal all of their eight custom-built knowledge facilities that make use of N+1 design and the most recent expertise, together with Free Cooling from GEA Denco, which is making their web hosting options part of the race to make the Earth a greener place (that’s, eco-friendly). Their knowledge facilities are scattered throughout the UK and are utilizing on-net places within the USA, Middle East and Far East.
While emphasizing devoted and bare metal hosting, Redstation additionally gives colocation services with a number of UK websites (London, Manchester, Maidenhead, Nottingham, Gosport, St. Asaph, Glasgow and Leicester), one within the United Arab Emirates (Dubai) and one in Singapore (Singapore).
Redstation’s official web site is easy-to-use and it accommodates a fair proportion of details about its community, computing providers and internet hosting options. However, it doesn’t present too many insights into the corporate itself nor its historical past.
The web site includes a matching weblog with a few well-written articles, nevertheless, the freshest one dates again to December of 2016, which left us considerably disenchanted.
You can even discover them on LinkedIn, however not on some other standard social media websites.
Plans and pricing
Redstation’s providers embrace devoted servers, naked metallic cloud, hybrid cloud, GPU servers, in addition to reseller, colocation, media streaming, huge knowledge and a big selection of comparable providers. In brief, they will present every little thing essential for a mission-critical web site working for medium to massive companies with the need to develop.
One of the key benefits of utilizing Redstation’s devoted servers is a capability to fully customise just about every little thing about it. You can begin with onerous disc house, reminiscence, RAID configuration, working system, management panel, software program and so forth. The value you’ll pay for that is absolutely influenced by choices you made in regards to the base configuration of your future server, so it might probably vary from being fairly a discount (for the providers you’ll get) to costing a small fortune. Since Redstation guarantees no minimal contract with its naked metallic infrastructure pricing fashions, you’ll be able to pay-as-you-go.
As it’s typically the case with related firms, Redstation gives no refund coverage, however gives quite a lot of fee strategies together with many of the main credit score/debit playing cards (with American Express being excluded), financial institution transfers and PayPal.
Ease of use
Although minimalistic, Redstation’s official web site manages to offer a good deal of details about its key providers: naked metallic servers, devoted servers, GPU servers and colocation internet hosting providers. Here yow will discover out extra about their infrastructure normally, knowledge facilities, networking options, storage choices (Pure Storage, Dell and EMC), safety options and business certifications they’ve acquired (PCI, ISO, OHSAS, Cyber Essentials and Data Protection). However, to study extra about these and the choices similar to pricing, you’ll be required to select an answer, e book a name (for a free session) or create an account with Redstation.
When it involves {hardware}, relying on what base system you resolve on, you’ll be able to select between just a few processors (Xeon 4 Core, Dual Xeon 10 Core or Dual Intel Xeon Silver 4114), an quantity of reminiscence (128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of RAM), amount of onerous disk house (something above 4x500GB SSD will price additional money) and whether or not to incorporate {hardware} RAID configuration or not.
As for software program, you’ll be able to select an working system (between a number of variations of Windows, Linux, VMware ESXi, FreeNAS or your personal OS), a management panel (there are just a few variations of cPanel and Plesk) and resolve if you’d like MS RDS license or MS SQL licenses.
Some extras can be found as effectively (for extra cash) together with distant administration, just a few server SLAs and IP addresses.
Creating an account with Redstation signifies that you’ll have to offer a fair proportion of private info (your full identify, e-mail handle, phone quantity and so forth), your billing handle (avenue, city, county, submit code, phone and even fax), safety particulars (create a password and a choose a safety query) and resolve whether or not you need to present some extra knowledge or not.
In a matter of seconds your account will probably be activated and also you’ll proceed to Redstation’s dashboard from which you’ll be capable of handle every little thing about your account, domains (register a brand new or add an present one), and servers, contact buyer help or seek the advice of their FAQ part. Despite the truth that Redstation’s UI seems and feels out-of-date, it’s fairly simple-to-use.
It’s immensely vital to level out that moreover auto-installation of your OS, there aren’t any extra auto-setup instruments. Therefore, in case you are not an especially skillful webmaster, chances are you’ll discover that you’re not fairly as much as the challenges of internet hosting with Redstation and will discover a extra appropriate answer.
Speed and expertise
Among the quite a few causes given as to why you need to select them within the sea of comparable internet hosting suppliers, Redstation highlights their “superfast, extremely safe, massively scalable, multi-data facilities” and fiber community that’s fully owned, managed, and maintained by their very own community division.
However, after placing Redstation’s official web site to the check (offered by our trusty software GTmetrix) we had been confronted with an evaluation error on account of the web page not redirecting correctly, which is the primary time round we had been confronted with this. When nothing modified after a number of ill-fated makes an attempt, we determined to modify GTmetrix for one more standard software (Pingdom) and at last obtained the outcomes. Fortunately (since no person likes a sluggish web site), Redstation’s web site absolutely loaded in 1.84 seconds. However, there was a full record of suggestions on the best way to enhance the positioning’s efficiency leading to C (74%), which is very common.
As for uptime, UptimeRobot (our different trusting software, however the one which didn’t allow us to down) had rather a lot to say about Redstation, however nothing however good phrases. After monitoring Redstation’s official web site for an entire month, not a single suggestion of downtime was recorded, thus justifying their 100% uptime assure.
Support
Redstation gives 24/7 (one year a 12 months) buyer help by way of MyServers buyer portal ticketing system and the phone line. However, stay chat shouldn’t be an possibility.
Given that stay chat is without doubt one of the all-time-favorite help channels normally, being swift, environment friendly and handy with out the burden of real-time dialog or boredom of being placed on maintain, the dearth of it’s Redstation’s most important weak spot when it comes to help.
As for self-sufficient help choices, Redstation gives a reasonably intensive FAQ part protecting all the overall queries which can be divided into 9 most important classes, however you may also search the answer by utilizing the search bar. Since they provide no knowledgebase nor how-to guides, if you happen to want greater than this, you’ll need to depend on Redstation’s help workers.
However, the scope of help you’ll get appears restricted to points concerning the infrastructure. Therefore, you probably have any software program considerations or points, you’ll almost definitely be left to determine it out by yourself.
The competitors
Just like Redstation, RapidSwitch is a baby of the identical firm (iomart Group plc) and one which shares pursuits with its sibling, primarily a dedication to highly-flexible naked metallic server options. In phrases of infrastructure, community, providers, options and help, these hosts are virtually a carbon copy of one another (moreover RapidSwitch’s official web site being extra polished), so you’ll be able to’t go unsuitable with both.
Another sibling of Redstation (and RapidSwitch) is Easyspace. However, this sibling is extra geared in direction of newcomers in comparison with the opposite two, providing shared internet hosting as an possibility, 24/7 stay chat help, free area for one 12 months and user-friendly web site builder. On the draw back, identical to its siblings, Easyspace gives no free trials nor a money-back assure.
An wonderful various to Redstation and its members of the family for rookies and site owners alike, is a fan-favorite, beginner-friendly and US-based HostGator. This firm is able to protecting every little thing from primary blogs to huge enterprise and all with out breaking the financial institution. That being mentioned, HostGator’s devoted server options are pre-built and never as customizable as those you should buy with suppliers similar to Redstation and RapidSwitch.
However, in case you are searching for a pocket-friendly shared internet hosting plan with loads of engaging options, look no additional. All of HostGator’s shared internet hosting packages embrace free area registration, free web site transfers, free SSL certificate, a tidy sum of one-click installs, HostGator’s personal drag-and-drop web site builder and (in contrast to all hosts talked about above) a money-back assure and the one legitimate for a pleasingly lengthy interval of 45 days.
The same set of options with shared hosting packages, and terrific selections for these trying to find WordPress-oriented, VPS and devoted server options can be found with Bluehost. Its money-back assure won’t be as beneficiant because the one with HostGator, nevertheless it beats HostGator when it comes to safety since its complimentary web site backups are extra customizable and barely much less restricted.
Final verdict
If you are after a devoted server assembled based on your wants and linked on the identical day, a safe colocation facility or top-of-the-league internet hosting for a business-critical web site, take an opportunity with Redstation. What’s extra, they’re as cheap as a supplier of this sort can get, and you may all the time begin out with the most affordable plans and improve it in a while.
However, Redstation is in no way geared in direction of newcomers nor does it present some easier internet hosting options similar to shared or managed WordPress internet hosting. This could be discovered with hosts similar to Bluehost, HostGator and (if you wish to stay inexperienced, love inexperienced and host inexperienced) GreenGeeks.
