Hello,
I've been an extremely happy customer of linode for quite some time.

I've got a unique situation coming up (independent of linode) that may require an actual real dedicated server. I'm looking for recommendations from you all on who are the best companies to provide "dedicated, unmanged, linux-based, real" hosting, preferably in the Atlanta area. Nothing fancy, I don't care about CPanel or anything extra like that.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Hal Williams

So do you want to build your own server and ship it to them, or do you want "them" to supply the server for you? (Rent/buy?)

--deckert

Thanks for your quick response.

I suppose I'd be using a server provided by them. Honestly, I've not really thought about building my own, but that's interesting and I'm certainly not opposed to it. I just don't know the pros and cons. I suppose it has a lot to do with the particular hosting provider, whether they welcome someone building their own, or not.

I recently switched to SoftLayer from LayeredTech. SoftLayer is a relative newcomer (maybe a couple years old?), but was founded by old hands from (I believe) The Planet, who were fed up with the direction the company was taking.

They probably have the highest reputation among dedicated server providers at the moment. And they provide the kind of unmanaged service that we Linoders prefer.

Make sure and check out the specials too; this changes weekly I believe.

If you're looking for something a lot cheaper (if you're upgrading from Linode, you're not likely needing any dual CPU server necessarily, which is all I can see that SoftLayer offers for the smallest plans), you could look into ServerPronto. I know I've heard bad reviews of them a couple years ago, but I've got a friend that just signed up with them, and seems to like them so far.