When Equinix announced its intention to sunset its bare metal offering by June 2026, it met with understandable frustration from many of the service’s existing customers.
And while the initial wave of news and speculation surrounding the Equinix Metal end of life announcement has now subsided, for those in need of alternative infrastructure, the pressure is on. The remaining months before Equinix Metal’s final shutdown will be a critical time during which all those affected must start weighing up their options.
In this blog post, we put the situation into context and discuss three Equinix Metal alternatives – each with something different to offer.
In 2020, Equinix announced that it would be expanding its product range to include a fully automated and interconnected bare metal as a service offering– Equinix Metal. It came about after Equinix acquired Packet (a leading bare metal automation platform at the time) for $335 million. The following statement was issued in a press release shortly after the acquisition.
“By leveraging Packet’s innovative and developer-oriented bare metal service offering to accelerate its organic bare metal solution development, Equinix aims to create advanced solutions for enterprises to rapidly deploy digital infrastructure at global scale with differentiated performance and robust integration to the public cloud.”
By October 2020, Equinix Metal was open for business, offering customers integrated compute, networking and storage within a single-tenant, bare metal server environment. But just four years later, Equinix announced that it would be sunsetting its bare metal service.
“Equinix stopped commercial sales of Metal to focus on the solutions our customers have told us drive the most impact on their business, namely colocation, interconnection, and our hyperscale offerings,” wrote Brian Stein, Senior VP of Edge Infrastructure Services at Equinix.
The decision to sunset Equinix Metal has come as a surprise to many. Largely because it doesn’t reflect the market. The bare metal market is growing - set to increase from a valuation of $8.5 billion in 2023 to $19.1 billion by the end of 2028.
Because of this, some analysts are attributing the move simply to a narrowing of focus.
“[Bare metal] is a very different business model than pure colocation with interconnection,” said Alan Howard, Senior Analyst for Data Center Infrastructure at Omdia. “I imagine what likely happened was Equinix started looking at its growth trajectory and its margin on these services, then [realized]…it doesn’t really make sense going forward.”
Equinix Metal sunsets on June 30, 2026, leaving existing customers with a window of approximately 18 months following the initial end of life announcement.
In the meantime, new features are no longer being prioritized, and commercial sales of Equinix Metal have now ended. However, customers are not being left unsupported and Equinix has promised to uphold service levels for existing users and assist with the upcoming transition.
Despite this, an inevitable period of uncertainty will follow as organizations start looking for alternative infrastructure solutions. And for some it’s set to be especially challenging. This is particularly true for open-source projects that have been relying extensively on Equinix Metal servers offered for free as part Equinix’s Open-Source Partner Program (OSPP). Equinix Metal’s closure leaves them not only in need of alternative infrastructure but also additional funding to cover the cost.
For existing Equinix Metal customers who are open to shifting to a colocation or managed services solution, staying with Equinix may be a possibility.
The transition would involve deploying customers’ own physical hardware in rack space within one of Equinix’s data centers as opposed to leasing dedicated hardware directly from Equinix.
However, colocation will not be a viable option for everyone, and many will need to start looking to third-party options (whether that be a comparable bare metal server hosting solution or virtual machines).
Ultimately the right choice will always come down to customers’ individual needs and priorities. For those who find themselves in this situation, below we outline three Equinix Metal alternatives to consider.
Category: bare metal
Best for: bespoke bare metal solutions, expert support, global data center locations
Products available: dedicated servers, cloud servers, cloud storage, load balancing, firewall, private racks, private cloud, Kubernetes clusters
servers.com is a global bare metal cloud provider specializing in bespoke infrastructure solutions for businesses operating within the gaming, iGaming, adtech, fintech, Web3, SaaS and streaming industries.
The infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider offers dedicated bare metal server provisioning in 40 minutes or less and latest generation Dell PowerEdge rack servers. This hardware is hosted out of Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers spanning three continents, and locations including London, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dallas, San Jose, Washington DC and Miami.
servers.com support is delivered 24/7 by trained engineers and goes beyond standard break/fix. Additionally, each customer is assigned an account team to work with them throughout the entirety of the relationship – a service that extends to communicating via each customer’s preferred communication platform (WhatsApp, Slack, Discord etc.).
servers.com is the best option for you if you’re looking to keep your infrastructure in a single-tenanted, on-demand server setup. This is especially true if you were previously using Equinix’s unmanaged ‘Customer Operated’ bare metal services. As an unmanaged bare metal hosting provider, servers.com customers maintain full access to (and control over) their hardware, with the benefit of exceptional support as and when needed.
Category: web hosting
Best for: managed hosting, high-traffic websites
Products available: VPS hosting, cloud hosting, GPU hosting, dedicated server hosting, WordPress hosting and more
Liquid Web specializes in providing managed web hosting solutions for professionals and small to mid-size businesses. Services are available via a range of different plans at varying price points within the following categories: VPS hosting, bare metal cloud, bare metal servers, GPU servers and WordPress hosting.
All plans are fully managed, which means once server installation is complete, Liquid Web takes over the launch and maintenance of their customers’ hardware and applications. Customers can then track all information relating to the service via a control panel.
It’s a great option for businesses looking for a hands-off approach to web hosting and a particularly good fit for high-traffic ecommerce stores and complex web applications built on WordPress. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a greater level of control over your hardware, it’s worth considering an unmanaged solution. You’ll still receive technical support but maintain much more autonomy over your server maintenance.
Category: hyperscale cloud computing
Best for: scalability, virtual machines, global availability
Products available: compute, storage, database, networking, analytics, and more
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides cloud computing with a focus on short-term contracts and scalability. For existing Equinix Metal customers, the benefit of switching to AWS lies in its flexibility. With AWS services like Amazon EC2, you’ll be able to obtain and boot a new server instance in minutes and scale your capacity up and down just as quickly if your needs change.
However, unlike Equinix Metal, servers.com and Liquid Web, AWS does not offer a bare metal service as part of its product offering. This means that you’d no longer have sole tenancy over your server or direct access to your hardware. Instead, you’d be running your infrastructure on virtual machines (VMs) as part of a shared server environment which comes with certain tradeoffs – performance degradation from resource contention, for example. So, whilst for some it may be a suitable Equinix Metal alternative it will depend on your specific needs.
|
Equinix Metal alternative |
Category |
Products available |
Best for |
|
servers.com |
Bare metal |
Dedicated servers, cloud servers, cloud storage, load balancing, firewall, private racks, private cloud, Kubernetes clusters |
Bespoke bare metal solutions, expert support, global data center locations |
|
Liquid Web |
Web hosting |
VPS hosting, cloud hosting, GPU hosting, dedicated server hosting, WordPress hosting |
Managed hosting, high-traffic websites |
|
AWS |
Hyperscale cloud |
Compute, storage, database, networking, analytics |
Scalability, virtual machines, global availability |
Equinix Metal’s closure came as a surprise to many, and the implications of its shutdown are widespread. Nobody wants an unexpected migration, but for existing customers of Equinix Metal, that’s simply the reality they must face.
The good news is twofold: there is still time and there are some great alternatives out there. That said, it’s no secret that migrations take a significant amount of research and planning which means the time to start is now.
If you’re affected by the Equinix Metal shutdown and aren’t sure what direction to take, get in touch with our team. Even if servers.com isn’t the best fit for your business, we’ll be happy to offer some guidance to help you through your transition away from Equinix Metal.
Equinix initially announced plans to acquire bare metal automation platform, Packet on January 14, 2020. The transaction (valued at $335 million) was completed on March 3, 2020.
Equinix Metal will shut down its services on June 30, 2026. In the meantime, new features are no longer being implemented, and commercial sales of the service have ended.
The Equinix Metal shutdown means that existing Equinix Metal customers will need to migrate their infrastructure to alternative providers. These customers will need to complete their migration before June 30, 2026, to avoid any resulting period of downtime.
Existing Equinix Metal customers should start looking for an alternative provider as soon as possible. Migrations take time and careful planning. It’s advised that Equinix Metal users conduct thorough research into the available alternatives before deciding on a route forward.
No migration is the same, but following these steps will help to make it as smooth as possible:
Take some time to understand your current technology stack. Consider what you want to emulate versus what could be improved upon. Are there any hosting mistakes you can learn from and avoid in your next setup?
Research a range of alternative providers considering factors such as data center locations, server provisioning time, network performance and customer support.
Get in touch with your preferred vendors to discuss your specific requirements and get a quotation (if possible, get a personalized estimate).
Calculate the sum of your migration costs that includes the cost of data transfer, the cost of the new service, associated labor costs and any overlap that may occur to keep your applications running during the transition to your new provider.
Factor in challenges along the way. The exact services you were using with Equinix Metal may not be available elsewhere, so you’ll need to work with your new provider to find suitable alternatives.
