But what you'll get in performance, you'll lose in sanity.

I know that everyone has their "Horror" stories about a provider that they'd avoid at all costs, but, Softlayer still has an IBM "Mindset." Provisioning servers? You ask them, then their sales team approves -- hardly automatic. Seemingly minor changes to their system will force a hypervisor restart, and dealing with their account reps for anything is a nightmare.

I'm not saying that Amazon is the end-all, be-all; I'm just saying that the grass isn't greener on the softlayer side of the fence.

Softlayer made my "do not do business with again" list after about 3 years of renting a server from them. I cancelled the server within what I believed (and still believe) to be the time required and they billed me an extra month, refusing to acknowledge the cancellation was timely submitted.

They sit right behind Oracle and Verisign on the "never again" list.