{"id":4610,"date":"2021-08-28T16:55:56","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T16:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cloudaye.com\/?p=4610"},"modified":"2021-08-28T16:59:44","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T16:59:44","slug":"digitalocean-vs-linode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cloudaye.com\/digitalocean-vs-linode\/","title":{"rendered":"DigitalOcean vs Linode"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chances are, if you\u2019re shopping for a virtual private server, you already understand why they\u2019re useful for web developers, app designers and everyone in between. You also probably know that the surge in popularity of hourly pricing means you can try most of the big players in this space for yourself for the cost of one Bazooka Joe comic (not even the gum, just the comic). Hopefully you\u2019ve had time to peruse our other comparisons featuring\u00a0today\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0combatants\u00a0and a few of your other\u00a0relevant\u00a0choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What is DigitalOcean?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the not so distant past, it was commonplace to refer to DigitalOcean as a plucky underdog – a company with a long way to go. Well, Ben Uretsky and crew must be quick learners. The company has gone through at least 11 financing rounds, which has seen it raise more than $305 million. A lot of this funding has gone to data center build outs and expansion of cloud services, with the company now boasting a global footprint, with data centers in Toronto, Singapore, San Francisco, and New York, among other locations. The company\u2019s $250 million revenue run rate<\/a> makes them almost comically successful by any measure. To hear them tell it,<\/a> the main reason for such a meteoric rise is their intense focus on developers. Their progressively inexpensive pricing structure certainly hasn\u2019t hurt matters, either.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Linode? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Linode\u2019s path to prominence has been a stark contrast to DigitalOcean\u2019s. Founded back in the relative Dark Ages of 2003, Christopher Aker\u2019s company has been a relevant player in the world of virtual hosting since, well, virtual hosting has been a thing. But ironically, if not for the increased competition from later entrants like DigitalOcean, Linode might have stagnated. It takes a lot of resources to compete with tech behemoths like Amazon and Microsoft, but even with gobs of cash, those companies have such broad offerings that they are operating in a different market altogether. Watching DigitalOcean in the rearview mirror must have lit a fire under Linode, because the venerable company has slashed prices across the board and added more economical tiers. From integrating excellent control panel support to building a robust API, the company has made its offerings more user friendly, so as better to compete with rivals like DigitalOcean.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are DigitalOcean’s Features?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

DigitalOcean began to make waves due at least in part to its super simple and affordable pricing. As we will note in the Linode breakdown, that advantage has eroded somewhat over the years, but nevertheless you can find great value up and down DigitalOcean\u2019s range. Their pricing page<\/a> makes it easy to see what your bill will look like whether you will spin up a droplet for a few hours or months at a time. Their tiniest plan will run you $.007\/hr for 1GB RAM, 1 core processor, 25GB SSD and 1TB of transfer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If DigitalOcean\u2019s starter pricing seems cheap, it\u2019s because it is. Additional memory, processing power and space will cost you more as you go along, and DigitalOcean, whose droplets use KVM as hypervisor, can accommodate some very high volume users. Its $.007\/hr and $5\/mo VPS pricing is so insanely cheap I don\u2019t know why everyone doesn\u2019t have one. $5 is not very much money. You probably can\u2019t even buy four dollars for $5 nowadays. Last week I saw a guy drop a $5 bill and he tried to pick it up by throwing another $5 bill at it. They both blew away, and he didn\u2019t even blink. Hey pal, that could be two months of a private server!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to DigitalOcean\u2019s billing what you see is what you get. In the old days, DigitalOcean did not charge for bandwidth overages. That has now changed, with DigitalOcean charging in the realm of $0.01\/GB for bandwidth overages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DigitalOcean didn\u2019t stop at pushing the cloud pricing envelope. Their insistence on the increased performance and reliability of SSDs forced competitors to play catch-up, and for good reason. This test<\/a> from 2013 shows how even two years ago DigitalOcean\u2019s SSD servers were blowing away the competition: a pair of heavyweight incumbents in Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. But this advantage has eroded over time as well. Unfortunately, if you\u2019re a trendsetter, eventually you set all the trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, not everything DigitalOcean does spreads like wildfire. Their developer-focused and relatively narrow approach may have made them relevant and buried a few competitors along the way, but compatibility and adaptability are the games most other providers are playing. You may find the app integrations lacking, or you may not; Docker, Ghost, LAMP, Ruby on Rails, WordPress and more are all present and accounted for. No matter what, you can appreciate DigitalOcean\u2019s commitment to improving their offerings: The last six months alone have seen them roll out a new API<\/a>, a revamped DNS<\/a> and expanded IPv6 support<\/a>. With a 99.99% uptime SLA and a 55 second startup time, you should have plenty of time to play around.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are Linode’s Features?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Linode has a slightly different perspective on the world of virtual private servers, having entered the market way back in 2003. While their product line is not as robust as a \u201cfull-featured\u201d cloud provider like Microsoft\u2019s Azure or Amazon, its commitment to delivering a first class Linux server experience in the cloud is razor sharp.

Linode can match the bargain basement $5\/mo offering, with a 1GB RAM \u201cnanode\u201d which comes with single core, 25GB SSD disk space, 1TB transfer plan that sounds very familiar to DigitalOcean users. Low-end to moderate users won\u2019t find much to gripe about between the two companies\u2019 provisions, the differences mostly amounting to a gig here or a core there, but Linode really steps up their game for heavy users, in some cases matching DigitalOcean\u2019s capacity several times over. But make sure you pick the right plan! Linode is just as stingy with bandwidth overages, charging $0.01\/GB once you\u2019ve hit your limit (excluding in-bound traffic).

Linode, too, will generally run your favorite flavor of Linux (Ubuntu, most likely, if the stats are any indication). A Linode user will have to swap CoreOS compatibility for Slackware, Gentoo, openSUSE, Slackware or Arch Linux, however. Happily, Linode adds even more functionality by allowing for the installation of custom distros, a feature that DigitalOcean users will have to go without.

It may be difficult, but try not to get too excited counting up Linode\u2019s feature advantages in this competition; feeling like a kid in a candy store doesn\u2019t really make much sense now that we all just get 40 flavors of Pocky delivered to our doors for ten bucks a month. You want those analytics we were talking about earlier? Try Longview. Need load balancing? If you\u2019ve got a crisp Andrew Jackson every 30 days or so, Linode wants to sell you NodeBalancers. What if you just feel like sitting back and watching someone else do all the work while you try to find \u201crare Mountain Dew\u201d on eBay, for whatever reason? Managed Hosting and Professional Services have got you covered. Linode has done a great job filling out its product line beyond mere servers; there really is something here for everyone. Linode\u2019s data centers, in locations like Newark, Fremont, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Mumbai, allow your apps to support a global user base, with Linode recently adding new data centers around the world.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does DigitalOcean or Linode Have a Bigger Community?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Both DigitalOcean and Linode have active communities centered around open source, Linux, vps hosting, and cloud computing generally, though DigitalOcean has a big lead where sheer numbers are concerned. DigitalOcean has around 4 million developers in its global community, with customers in an impressive 195 countries, who, collectively, have spun up more than 150 million DigitalOcean droplets. The stats indicate DigitalOcean\u2019s rising profile in cloud computing, ranging from simple web hosting for small PHP websites to complex data farms for large enterprises running on thousands of cpu cores. These are impressive accomplishments for a cloud provider that started only in 2012 before launching its data centers in San Francisco, Singapore, and London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With over 800,000 developers using Linode, the Linode community is impressive as well, but it\u2019s obviously a smaller group than that in the DigitalOcean community. Part of it might just be how obsessively Linode has focused on highly technical Linux types, which, perhaps, has slowed down its growth somewhat since its 2003 founding. In the early days, the company did not offer a convenient one click installer for common web hosting software, making it clear that it was only for Linux-savvy power users. This is a company that got its start in the cloud in 2003, before Amazon or Azure even appeared on the scene, so its community, while smaller than the competition, has some dedicated early adopters who are unlikely to ever jump ship.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is DigitalOcean or Linode Easier to Use?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Over time, both DigitalOcean and Linode have become easier to use, though they continue to be cloud hosting services with a decidedly technical developer and devops engineering audience. Both platforms offer un-managed hosting plans with a 99.9% uptime SLA, block storage to meet your apps\u2019 demands, downtime mitigation, high availability features such as Linode\u2019s load balancer NodeBalancer, and power features to support complex enterprise cloud deployments. The advanced functionality offered on the platforms makes them ideal for such users but are not ideal for small, throwaway projects by small teams, where the complexity of provisioning infrastructure from scratch, running, and maintaining it, can be overwhelming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, both platforms continue to make their cloud products easier for beginners to use. For example, Linode now offers one-click install for the following popular cloud applications:<\/p>\n\n\n\n