As my main project, MailTank, continues to grow and evolve we are faced with the challenge of scaling.

We faced the decision, either expand our data center footprint or move elsewhere.

After some research, I found the top managed hosting companies to be Rackspace.com and Peer1.com

In the last week I have gotten quotes from each, but the experience was considerably different.

I contacted both companies through their web sites, within a few minutes of each other.

A sale rep for Peer1 was immediately available via chat, which I took advantage of. Jeff, a very knowledgeable guy, answered my questions via chat.

After determining that I was not some “hosting” customer looking for something a step above shared hosting and he got on the phone with me.

20 minutes later, all my questions were answered and a few hours later I had a quote for managing our infrastructure.

Rackspace was a different experience.

I sent my request and hours later got a call from a sale rep whom gauged my needs, then scheduled a conference call through Webex a few days later.

During the Webex presentation I got a Powerpoint presentation about the company and then spent a few minutes talking to a technical lead about requirements.

At the end of the meeting, he scheduled follow-up conference call to discuss the proposal.

A couple hours after the initial conference call I got their quote.

As I sit comparing the quotes, before the final call with Rackspace, I realize that Peer1 just “feels” more like a place I would like to do business.

Jeff was on top of things, didn’t need a technician to ask me the basic questions, and didn’t waste my time building the value proposition based on his company’s historical track record.

Jeff is winning in my mind for one reason. He is selling me “a solution” not his “company”.

Besides, Rackspace is considerably more expensive and the proposed configurations that don’t stack up favorably with Peer1.

For example, Rackspace is offering a database server with RAID1, while Peer1 is offering RAID 10 storage.

In the end we are probably staying in-house until this summer.

But it is quite educational seeing how they each sell.