Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) Reviews

I have my own social media system called bolixo.org, and I am hosting it using Linode.

For smaller companies, it is very important that they have a small but well-focused set of cloud computing services. They are very inexpensive and very reliable. I am a light user and do not use all of the services, but I'm a serious user. In the cloud business, there is another kind of entry-level service, where they provide you, for example, a web server and you only have to provide content. Linode is another side of the cloud business, where they're providing you a full solution. This is your server so you're managing whatever you want to host on it.

Using Linode helps me for a simple reason, which is that I do nothing with respect to the servers. I don't have servers and I do not want to have servers. I managed servers for four years and I know how it's done, but, I don't want to care, for example, about power. Where I am, we have a lot of power failures. This week alone, I have had 16 hours of power failures. Clearly, I don't have the technology in-house to support that long without power. I know that it exists, where I can put in a generator or come up with another solution, but I don't want to do that. Instead, I want to concentrate on what I'm doing. Linode delivers an inexpensive service and it's completely reliable.

I am a long-time believer in the Linux operating system and have been using it for approximately 28 years, and the fact that Linode provides me with Linux Nodes is something that I like. Linode got its name from "Linux Node".

They have a very nice web interface to allow you to manage and reorganize your server.

Having data centers in different regions is good for latency. They have a presence in Japan, Europe, the US, and Toronto, Canada. If I install a server in Europe and people from that area are using it then it will be faster for them. There is a visible difference between my servers, where one of them is in New York and another is in California. It's basically a continent away, but I see a difference. There is great value in the fact that I can have European users served by a European server.

They have a lot of features that I am not yet using, but I will have to use them at some point. For example, it's possible to create a server and keep that as a standard image. Later, when you create a server, instead of selecting one of their pre-configured images, you select your own.  This means that you can deploy more servers quickly. If at some point my project grows, and I expect to deploy many servers per week, I will need to use this feature.

Also, my understanding is that they have a full set of APIs, so I can interact with them by using programs. I've not used that, but I intend to check it at some point. With only three servers, this is a non-issue, but if I grow to 100 or 200 servers, at some point, I'll need some way to automate my interaction with Linode.

The network connectivity is very good. With the entry-level service that I am using, I am getting one terabyte of data transfer per month. This means that with three servers, I have three terabytes of aggregate, which leaves me a lot of room to grow.

It is important to me that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers, although it is also an issue for me. In running my social media site, I am not spying on users or reselling their data. For many users, it is really important to know that their data will be handled according to the law in their country.

I am located on the East coast of Canada but have my node at a data center in California. You can decide where you want to create your note. For example, I know that they have a data center in Europe, so at some point, I will create a node there. Because it's a distributed system, when the user creates their account, they can choose to have it there if they want the data to be stored according to European regulations. The data will remain there forever.

The issue comes about because Linode is a US company, so my users have to wonder how shielded they are from US law. I know of a situation involving Microsoft, which is a very large company, and they were fighting the US government because they have a data center in Ireland. The US wanted to retrieve data from it and Microsoft declined because it was out of their jurisdiction. Some people are concerned with having their data shielded from US law and I spoke with Linode about this, and they don't have an answer. In fact, if the US government asked Linode for help spying on a customer in Europe, Linode would not even be allowed to tell anyone about it. It is clear that Linode has the technology to spy on usage, although that is not to say that they are doing it.

I have been using Linode since 2017.

Linode is a very reliable product. There have been issues over the years but they have always been solved by the support team. They have done maintenance on their side over the years. so there were some service outages. However, they were planned and very short. There have not been very many of them, with perhaps a frequency of once a year. It's very light. I would expect this from any type of company that hosts a web server or something similar.

I'm not their biggest customer, by far. They have an entry-level product called the Nanode, which is a minimal server that costs $5 per month. Linode was the first cloud service to offer such a low-priced, entry-level solution.

This is the only solution I'm using. I have three Nanodes and I started with one in 2017. By the end of 2018, I had moved to three. I hope I will grow because I'm working on a social media system that is not really well-known, called bolixo.org.

I can't comment greatly about scalability because I'm not using it to a great extent. However, I can say that in more than three years that I have been using it, I've never noticed that I wasn't alone. I certainly know that on a physical server, there may be perhaps 60 customers running on it at the same time. This is a guess, as it could just as easily be 30 or 100 users, but the point is that I've never noticed that there was a slow down I could not explain. Essentially, it means that it's well managed.

I know at some point, when I had this problem where I was using it for 12 hours, my server was running 100% of the time. Their first proposition was to move me to a different server, which was less busy. But the problem was me, and we fixed that. At the same time, I think they do a nice job at making sure that they don't put all of the users on the same machine. They balance the load, which is the best I can say about them in terms of scalability. From my perspective, it always looks fast and reliable.

The support has been great, even though I am not their biggest user. I have asked for service two or three times, and it was immediate.

At one point, when I had just rolled out a new version, they called me to say that for the past 12 hours, my system was using 100% of the CPU. According to the terms of service, you are not supposed to do that. I did not expect it because my server should be using very little in terms of CPU resources. As a result of this call, I checked my server.

I knew that the timeline fit because it was 12 hours earlier when I had upgraded, but I checked my server, and it was not busy. During this interaction with support, it was great because they provided me with many key points. Finally, we found that on my side, the tool I was using meant that my server was not busy. However, on their side, it was busy all the time. In the end, we both learned something new about virtualization and cloud computing. So this was my biggest interaction with them and it was nice because we both learned something and I fixed my problem.

In my previous job, I worked with similar solutions from Microsoft and Google. We had a problem where one of our servers at Microsoft stopped working. We couldn't connect and called support to find out what was going on, only to find out that they had deleted it because they thought it was no longer in use.

I find the problem with Microsoft and Google is that they are too big. They are so big that it's like the smaller customers like me don't exist. You're a paying customer but you can't talk to anyone. In our case, we were dealing with Microsoft resellers and I don't know whose mistake it was, where they believed that we were no longer using it, but this would not happen with Linode.

One thing that I learned recently about Linode is that if my account goes unpaid, for whatever reason, then they will not immediately delete my server. Instead, my server will continue to run up to three months, with the balance in the negative. If after that time they hear nothing from me then it will be deleted. They are professional and this is something that makes sense, yet it seems lost on the bigger companies.

The initial setup is very simple, although I am a techie, so it is expected.

This is a very inexpensive product. I pay $5 per month for each of three servers, for a total of $15 per month, and I normally prepay a few months in advance.

I recommend Linode for any company that wants to host a web server or other similar things.

Linode provides a lot of services that I don't use. For example, they provide backup functionality, load-balancing, monitoring, and other features that I do myself. In this regard, I am not a heavy user of their service. That said, I consider myself a very serious Linode user, but I'm using their product very lightly.

I'm glad that they do offer more services because as I grow, I may want to use them. For example, when it comes to something as simple as a backup, it can be a nightmare. I was an IT manager and I found that performing backups was very simple, but it was a nightmare at times. Ultimately, as I get larger, I may rely on them for this instead.

The backup feature is something that they will do professionally. I had an issue when I was working many years ago, where the person in charge of backup was supposed to do it every morning. However, there was an error in the backup system and he was not reporting it to anyone. This went on for months and when they needed the backup, it was not available. This is why it has to be done reliably.

The suitability of this product depends on your use case. If a very small company wants nothing other than to have a web presence, they might want to use GoDaddy, for example, where they're providing that kind of solution. They give you a web page, they run it for you and they do everything. But if you go to some custom solution, you need to provide your own web application and so on, then you have to go to the other side of the cloud, like Microsoft, Amazon with AWS, or Linode.

I don't know how all of their services work, but my understanding is that they're not offering the entry-level machine for someone who just wants to own their own web page. This is a situation where somebody might be using GoDaddy. But if you know how to manage a server, then they have a reliable solution for you that can scale internal offerings. If for example, you want a load-balancing then they have it, although I haven't tried it.

My recommendation is that if you are comfortable managing a server, you want a reliable solution with battery backup and features like that, as well as good network connectivity, then you should try Linode. This is a good product for techies and it allows you to offload many of the core aspects of managing a physical server.

Overall, I can say that what I am using works great. At this point, I am very happy with Linode.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

The primary use cases involve renting virtual private servers for our infrastructure, which is used for the development of software, website databases, websites, and some infrastructure such as for audio and video conferencing.

The main purpose for using their virtual private servers is for our in-house development program.

We use a Linux environment for our website database applications.

Linode has done a lot of help to us when it comes to streamlining anything where we need a server. Whether it is development servers or even servers for clients, Linode has helped us a lot.

It has helped us to accelerate our innovation, although there are similar services available so we didn't choose Linode mainly for that. Nonetheless, it certainly has helped because we don't have a core infrastructure. Obviously, all of the development that we do internally is happening on their server. This means that it's very important for our innovation and development, but other services would be able to compete with them, so it's not an exclusive advantage.

We choose Linode because they are very Linux-focused with their operating systems. It is very Linux-friendly and Linux-oriented. Mainly, in the end, it's all about vendor lock-in. If I compare it to Amazon and Google Cloud, they have a vendor lock-in, and we want to avoid that. This is something that Linode is very helpful with. They have a very standardized open system, which is easily configurable.

It is difficult for me to assess the price to performance ratio of Linode compared to other product providers because I don't have much experience with them. But, at least compared to our self-hosted servers, I think they have very good uptime and response time.

The DNS management tool is helpful. 

The virtual machine configuration tool is very helpful for setting up a new server or for modifying an existing server. It works very reliably.

It is very important that Linode offers a well-focused set of cloud computing services. They have a lot of options for different products which work well together. I saw the extended steps that products provide in the past, but I don't see a need to expand it anymore. I think it's perfect as it is right now.

I find it important that they offer worldwide coverage using multiple data centers, but from my point of view, they already have very good coverage. For example, here in Thailand, which is in the Asia region, it could cover Singapore, Japan, and also a little bit of Europe. It's important because we deal with a lot of international clients, but there is no need to extend these exhaustively. They are very well set up already.

They recently changed the web interface and although the older one did not look as good, the new one is less responsive. For example, when you changed something, it was instant. The new interface was really bad when it was first released, and it has improved, yet it is still not as responsive as the older one. I have considered whether being in Thailand makes a difference, although it is still a relative comparison. This is something that I have written an email to them about, and they are working on improving it.

I have been using Linode for two and a half years.

We use the Virtual Private Server (VPS).

In general, the stability is very good. However, there was recently a nasty problem in Singapore, and it seems to have service interruptions more now than in the past. I think that at some point in time, they will upgrade the Singapore data center and the stability will improve. For us, it's not really relevant because we don't have large scale, or clients in large numbers, and not around the clock. Ultimately, the interruptions don't affect us too much.

Our company's scalability is perfect because we can just upgrade to the next level of server available. Within 10 to 15 minutes, it will upgrade and everything is there. Even if we grow a lot over time, their servers are still big enough for our requirements. We wouldn't need anything on the level of Amazon or Google Cloud.

There are only two people in the company who are involved with the servers.

We use Linode for all our servers, with respect to ones which we host in-house or host for clients in-house. So if we need a commercial VM, we will set up a new Linode. From that point of view, it is sufficient for our use case.

In the future, if we increase usage it will be mostly for new clients that need database applications, cloud space, servers, or more resources. I expect it would be a steady but low increase in the resources that we need.

In terms of end-users, it is difficult to estimate how many use it because there are several websites and databases. There are probably no more than 100 in total, which includes all of our customers.

I have been in contact with technical support a few times. It was always via email and they were very responsive. There is nothing to complain about when it comes to their support.

I'm certainly thankful for their support, which always has a human answering my inquiries. I find that Linode is very good because when I've sent an inquiry, it's almost always dealt with by a human and it doesn't involve working with FAQs or automated responses. I find that very good. It is important because, with most issues, I can resolve them myself. It is only the very high-level technical issues that I have no idea about and need support for. It is very good compared to other services, especially Google. With other services, it is sometimes very difficult to get a human to respond to your inquiry.

Prior to Linode, we only had in-house servers. I started using Linode more intensively when we opened the company in Thailand, almost three years ago.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It is perfect, although I might ask for more configuration options, making the setup a bit more complex. For now, however, it is fine.

Normally, the initial deployment takes between five and ten minutes. Using the web interface, it is very fast to deploy. However, afterward, I need to check the parameters. This is something that I think could be improved if they allow a few more options through the web interface.

In terms of an implementation strategy, we didn't really have one because we don't have many servers. We only have a handful, so at this point, we just get a new Linode when we need a new one because our capacity is full. There are a few things that need to be done such as changing the root password, setting up additional system users, installing a few packages, and setting up standardized software for our company. However, we don't have any official documentation for the steps we follow.

I take care of the deployment for each Linode, and I have another person who supports me with the maintenance. We try to optimize everything as much as possible, especially in the maintenance phase. I also set up the updates as part of this effort.

The maintenance involves just logging in, doing some checks, and running some maintenance scripts. It's a new product, so this is part of our manual monitoring.

We see a return on investment in terms of time saved for managing our infrastructure.

If I compare to in-house servers, we don't save a great deal of time. I would estimate a 10% time savings in general and slightly more for setup and maintenance. Over time, it would become pretty substantial.

Linode has very good pricing. There might be something a little bit cheaper but I find it very fair and competitive, and nothing to complain about. Given the broad set of choices and options, I wouldn't ask for cheaper prices.

I find a simple pricing model important, and I think that's also one of the reasons why we decided on Linode. I'm paying a simple, per-hour rate for the service, with no automatic scaling-up of the pricing. This is extremely important because, with Google Cloud and Amazon, part of their infrastructure does bill based on usage. We didn't want this but instead, wanted to be billed on a fixed monthly rate. This allows us to keep an eye on the monthly fixed costs. It puts us more in control.

We have a few instances where we use a lot of resources on a few servers, and with the fixed price, I think that we save money compared to other cloud-hosting providers who bill according to usage. Even if we don't save much money, it allows us to plan very well ahead.

When we set up the company, we took a look at the options for commercial providers and we decided on Linode. These included Amazon, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and a new, smaller local one, based in Switzerland in Europe, which is where our mother company was created. The one that compared most closely was DigitalOcean.

I don't recall all of the details but we found from reviews that Linode had better support for Linux, and it is more developer-friendly. This may have changed over the past three years, but when it was time to choose, these were deciding factors.

We also knew about Microsoft Azure, but they didn't have good Linux support at that time. As such, we didn't look at them further.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Linode is the importance of stepping up production-ready infrastructure.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Linode is to start with a small server, work with it, and then scale up later. This works well because scaling up is really easy. If you plan on very large infrastructure, conduct a PoC first. In the case where you are just hosting websites, you can start with the resources for 100 or 200 users, and then scale up as the demand increases or the size of your company or user base increases.

In summary, this is a product that meets all of my expectations for a cloud service in terms of functionality, scale, and pricing. It is perfect for our scale.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I have a single 4GB model Linode and I use it as a personal server. I originally set it up to act as an email server, just for my own personal vanity domain. I don't use it for that anymore, but it's proved to be useful for many other things.

Right now, I run a Minecraft server on it and I also use it for a little bit of software development. I also use it as a jump host, if I need a stable place to SSH from my laptop to get to other online resources. It means that I only have a single point that I go through to get to the other stuff that I need.

I would say it's very important that Linode offers a relatively small, but well-focused set of cloud computing services because it differentiates them from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud by being focused and by having a more personal touch. I could probably get the same compute power for a little bit less from other providers, but the value of the continuity and the high quality of support is worth it. It's rare that I need to reach out to support, but when I do, the support is great.

Even though I use it for personal use, some of the things that I use it for are in a software development capacity. For example, the ability to experiment with running my own Mercurial server, Git server, and source control servers on this machine have leveled up my own knowledge of those products in a way that I think a more managed solution wouldn't. Having the tools in-hand of just a Linux box that I can play with, and that I can wipe and reimage at will, is more useful than a physical machine by virtue of that virtual rewriting. It is also more useful than a more abstracted managed service, just in that I can get my hands dirty and do rapid experimentation.

Linode has helped me to accelerate innovation and even though I'm not using this in an enterprise way, it has improved the way I innovate with respect to personal stuff. For example, it has helped with the things that I'm trying to learn and the things that I'm trying to do. Setting up a Minecraft server is a good example of that. Being able to read some of the documentation that Linode has about setting up a Minecraft server on your VPS, and just learning and figuring stuff out, has been valuable.

The most valuable feature is the static IP address, which has been very helpful for being able to log into the same address over the course of more than a decade.

Another useful feature is being able to have multiple system images that I can play with. I mostly use Ubuntu Linux, but if I want to play with a new version of Ubuntu, I can pretty easily add that. It's been super useful to upgrade my system over the years.

I just recently started using the Object Storage and Backup features, as well. Having good backups for peace of mind and disaster recovery is very nice as well.

Object Storage has been key, for me. I don't have a strong notion of exactly when Linode introduced Object Storage, but it's been very useful for me, for instance, in backing up my Git server, in addition to the whole node backup. The fact that I can interact from the command line with the Linode Object service to back up specific datasets, is super cool. I know they didn't have it when I first started using Linode and I think it's been introduced fairly recently, within the last couple of years.

The Linode documentation is superb. 

I would like to see more seamless integration with backup, although it's pretty easy to do.

Having more on-demand features would be helpful. For example, if for a little while I wanted to have four Linodes instead of just a single one, it seems like it's a little bit more difficult than spinning up an EC2 instance in AWS. It isn't a lot harder, but it could be improved nonetheless.

I have been using Linode for more than a decade, since 2008 or 2009.

The stability is excellent. It's very rare that there is an interruption in the service. I think that the reboot notices that I get, that aren't related to me doing stuff, are less than one a year. I think, in some cases, it's been four or five years between needing to have any kind of stability-related events on the machine. I can't think of any outages in the entire course of me using it, that anything with any kind of significant impact.

Part of the thing that I value about the single Linode that I have is that it is a very steady, stable known quantity. I don't have to worry about all the institutional weight that I do with interacting with AWS, which I do a lot from work.

Thinking about it from an operations point of view, I think that I would have a bit of a harder time scaling in Linode than I would in AWS, but not a whole lot harder. Given the Kubernetes support, I would imagine that that makes the process even easier. That said, I have not tried Kubernetes so I really have insufficient data to be sure.

It's not likely that I'm going to significantly increase my usage in the future. I might bump up to a higher size if I find that I need more CPU or RAM. Or, I might play around with having two to four Linode nodes. But beyond that, it's unlikely that I'm going to expand much.

I will definitely keep using Linode for as long as it is as stable and reasonably priced as it is, but at a steady one machine for my personal purposes.

The support from Linode is great. All of the times that I've reached out, it's been through email or through the web portal. It's always felt good and it felt like the person responding understood what I was asking about and solved it very quickly.

In terms of flexibility and overall responsiveness, the support is very good to excellent. Certainly, everyone that I've interacted with, in the fairly rare occasions that I do need support, have been very knowledgeable about the product and very good at understanding what issues I'm having and how to solve them.

I would say compared to AWS, AWS support varies a lot in terms of responsiveness and whether you've got a paid support plan. Sometimes, it does take a fair bit of back-and-forth with AWS support to get to the crux of the problem. I've never felt that back-and-forth was as necessary, that we get to the crux of the problem and solve it much more quickly with Linode.

Prior to using Linode, all of the machines that I had managed were all physical. I had my own personal machines and machines that I built for work, but they were all physical PCs or other architectures that I had to actually open up a case, and if I needed more RAM, I had to put the sticks in myself.

In comparison to a physical server, Linode has definitely saved me money. I never want to build a server again. Basically, if you build a physical machine and it is obsolete within two to five years, you've got to buy and recreate the whole thing again. Generally, the hardware is going to get cheaper over time, but I think that unless I were really putting a microscope on getting the cheapest components for building, Linode will cost less.

In some contexts, albeit not mine with just one or a few machines, it would make sense to build them. However, not having to worry about it and just letting Linode take care of the hardware upgrades is probably saving me money. I don't know if it would save a very tightly tuned hardware IT team money, but that's a completely different scale than what I'm looking at.

Linode was my first experience with virtual cloud servers and virtual machines, in general. Not too long after I started using Linode, I did start doing more with VMware, with an on-premises, physical server hosting multiple virtual machines. It was not too long after that when I got into AWS for work.

I found the initial setup to be fairly straightforward. It's so long ago that the details are fuzzy but I recall that I set up the account, chose names for things, picked which size I wanted, and then launched it. Within, what at that time, was an astonishingly short amount of time, I was able to log into it. It's just gotten better from there.

I didn't require an implementation strategy, although I think that's peculiar to using it as a single thing for personal use. I had the notion that I wanted a persistent Linux machine that was always on, and that I could get to from anywhere, and Linode seemed to fit the bill.

Over the years, I've used it for a lot of different purposes and it's adapted well to that. So I would say in this case, I didn't need a whole lot of planning. If I were to use Linode for a more complex deployment, I would want to plan it out, figure out what the costs are, figure out the network topology, and the other relevant details.

Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers, although I don't personally need that. It's a very attractive feature for sure, but since I just have the one virtual private server and it's just for me and for my friends connecting to it, I want it to be geographically close to me to have a low ping. I think it's located in New Jersey, and that's good for me, being in New England. While global coverage is not super important to me, in so far as it contributes to the health of Linode in general, I'm all for it.

The pricing model is simple, and that's one of the reasons that I've stuck with Linode for so long. When I was on the $20 Linode, I knew for a fact that on the first of every month, my credit card would get charged $20. That meant my Linode was available constantly.

At this point, I'm paying more like $35 per month for a slightly bigger machine, and the backup, and the object service. But again, I know that it's exactly $35 every month and I can budget for it. The simplicity and the consistency of that billing and pricing are quite valuable to me. Whereas with AWS, it's a crapshoot. The on-demand pricing means it's flexible and I only pay for what I use, but it's also much less predictable.

It is tough to determine whether using Linode has saved me money compared to what I would pay with other cloud providers. I don't think it has on a pure numbers basis, but in opportunity cost and higher-level budget planning, I think that the consistency probably has saved me money. I would have spent more time trying things, allocating things that I might not need, and so on. Ultimately, it saved me capital in the long run but it is not necessarily something that I can put a dollar figure on.

In comparison to everything else, predictability is the key aspect of the pricing model. With it being a known quantity that I can budget for every month, it frees up brain cycles to do everything else.

In my personal capacity, at this point, I have my Linode and I have a personal AWS account, and I use them for different purposes, but to similar degrees, or similar magnitudes. I find that just looking at it from a strict CPU and RAM horsepower perspective, EC2 is just marginally cheaper, but there are different features that I value in different places.

I took a brief look at some other things like Azure, Google Cloud Engine, and DigitalOcean, and I found that when I was looking, and this was probably about five or six years ago, that a lot of things that I wanted were pretty comparable in terms of capabilities and pricing. A lot of it came down to what I valued, in terms of the positioning, and support, and documentation, where I very much like Linode's documentation, especially, and support.

Of the others that I evaluated, DigitalOcean seemed the friendliest. And then, AWS and Azure were the behemoths, the 800-pound gorillas in the room.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Linode is the oldest lesson, which is just that a virtual cloud server has the availability and the flexibility that I couldn't get from physical at the time, or even now, for that matter. It's a key component in having something that's useful, having a machine that you can log into and do things on, in a consistent way, regardless of where I am or even what machine I'm connecting to it from.

My key advice for anybody who is looking into Linode would be just to dive right in. Pick it up and play around with it and if you find that it's not for you, try something else. But if you find that you love it, keep going.

In summary, Linode is a good product and I've been extremely satisfied with it for exactly the purposes I use it for. I have been pleased with it since I started using it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Initially, my use case was to have a server platform running that wasn't tied to the company that I worked for at the time. I wanted a solution where I could access our product and services from a platform that had no relation to our own. I was performing testing, as if coming from the outside as a customer of ours, having no network conductivity on our servers or anything like that. That was the first use case.

We realized that it was pretty handy to have a cloud platform that didn't reside in our network, so what happened next, when we moved our data center from Dallas to Florida, we employed the platform to facilitate it. We used a temporary name server and temporary mail server and another temporary server to keep some of our core services running while we were physically moving servers across the country.

When I moved and thought of this company, I used Linode as a temporary general server, as a holding place for all sorts of things. This included web services, our website, and other similar things. But then when I moved most of that to other providers, I still kept some of the web services running. So, it's like an application server for customers.

Basically, if I provide a service to a company, such as a mapping service for a logistics company, then my domain name can be used to access applications on the Linode server. I have a couple of instances there right now that are performing this task.

Linode offers worldwide coverage in multiple data centers, although this is not important to me because I only use the US data centers. In fact, one of the reasons that I stick with Linode is because of their US presence. Right now, I am only using the data center in Dallas and this specifically gives me a US presence.

Having a long-standing relationship with Linode, it's been easy to develop and subsequently deploy services provided to our customers on their platform. Without it, I would have to use a different platform like Amazon or Microsoft Azure, or something like that. Where this makes a difference is that it would take longer to get to market in the case where one of our customers requires a change or a specific feature that we don't normally provide. The fact that it is easy for us to modify that quickly and without much overhead means we can implement it. Essentially, the flexibility that Linode provides extends through us to our customers, which is a bonus for them.

The most valuable feature is that they are flexible and easy to get a hold of if I need something. For example, if I need to provision a server quickly, or if I need to change something, or if I for some reason need to do something that's outside of my plan that I pay for, I can contact them quickly and always get a hold of someone and always get a solution for it. I don't know if this is typical or if it's just based on having been a customer for a reasonably long time, but that's the main reason that I stick with them. It can be summed up by saying that they provide a much better level of service than a larger company like Amazon. I use Amazon as well, but it's a different experience.

Because they are a smaller company, they do not have, for example, all of the ways for authentication that Amazon or Azure has. However, that's not a downside for me because it means it's less complex to implement for us. So, while it is simple compared to some large solutions, that's a benefit to me and not a drawback.

I began working with Linode in 2004 or 2005 when I was working as a technology officer in my former company in the US. I still use the product but it for my own business in Europe. 

Linode has been very stable. Every time there is an outage, they will always contact me beforehand to let me know that there is something planned. I've never had an unplanned outage, so it's positive.

Scalability-wise, it has improved over time. Initially, it was harder to deploy complex servers and then grow them. What we'd have to do was shut them down and then scale up and then deploy a whole other server and then move whatever we had. This could have been an application or a number of applications, which were all moved to that new instance.

As it is now, you can just do it on the fly. But having said that, I don't really scale up and down very much. I generally know what I need and then deploy it. After that, if I ever discontinue something, we turn that off.

So in summary, I see that it has improved, but I haven't really used it much.

In my company, there are between three and five of us who work on it at any given time. Each of us performs multiple roles but in this capacity, we are system administrators and system engineers.

At this point, probably between 20% and 25% of the server and cloud needs are provided by Linode. As the business grows, the usage will grow, although it's always going to be proportional to what we have now. Given that 2020 was a pretty crazy year, it is very hard to predict growth right now.

I also use Amazon but It's a less personal experience. For example, if I'm abroad and I can't take care of something until I get back, I can't call Amazon and say, "Hey look, can you delay my invoice for two weeks, because I'm in Bangladesh and I have to deal with something," because my company is not big enough for that. With Linode, it's perfectly fine. You can just call them and they'll take care of it, which shows a high degree of flexibility and a high level of service.

The initial setup was not very easy, although when I set it up, it was quite some time ago and things were more difficult on the web at that time. I think that the difficulty of the installation has been commensurate with the level of technology on the web at the time. It is easier to do now than it was when I started.

They have the Linode manager, which is an online interface that works by you starting with selecting a service. You select all of the things that you want to have included in your service, whether it's a bare metal server or a virtual server, or whether it's provisioning new storage for that server that you already have. After it's selected and it's up and running, you have the same KVM that you do on other services. For example, you have a virtual screen as if you were in front of your machine in the data center.

We're such a small company that we don't really do this type of financial breakdown. We're just happy if we make a little bit more money than we did last quarter. Nonetheless, I can say that we have seen ROI because I believe that our flexibility is partially based on Linode's flexibility, which lets us keep and get more clients. I just couldn't give a specific number of how much.

Being that they are small, their prices are slightly higher than the large providers like Amazon if you compare raw computing power. However, I understand they have to be slightly higher because they just don't have as many customers. If you come from the outside, not knowing how things are going to work, then look at the costs by doing a cost analysis, you might wonder why you should choose them if they're going to be more expensive across the board.

I can say that it doesn't affect me because I know what I'm paying for. It is easy to say that any solution can be cheaper and it could be better, but I know what Linode does, I understand the service I'm getting, and I know what it will provide me. As such, I think that it is fair and I am willing to pay the premium.

If you have a situation where you just want to spin up a server and run a test, without actually having a client and you don't want to incur too many costs, it's not been bad at all.

Considering support, response time, uptime, and price, I think that the price to performance ratio is pretty good. They've been very responsive whenever I have had questions, so from that point of view, I'm very satisfied.

I have experience with AWS and Azure but when it comes to evaluating other products, we haven't sat down and had comparison meetings or anything like that. Everybody that works in the company has been with me for a while, so they're very familiar with which servers and services work based on our needs.

There are obviously reasons to use, for example, Microsoft Azure because perhaps one of your services uses one of their services that they provide intimately. In a case like this, it's just easier to deploy on their platform because maybe you use one of their endpoints that are already on Azure.

I haven't seen any reason to compare the products because whatever service we create and develop to offer to our customers dictates where we put it.

Linode offers a smaller, but well-focused set of cloud computing services to customers, which I think is important because they are able to provide a very high level of support. If they did everything, if they were much larger, maybe they couldn't maintain that level of support because it wouldn't work if all of their customers asked for special treatment.

My advice for anybody who is considering Linode is to start very small and become a customer of theirs, just so you get used to and familiar with the way that you deploy servers and services. I suggest this because of the fact that they are not a Microsoft or an Amazon, but rather they're a much smaller company.

Again, become familiar with it, and even if it seems a little basic at times, allocate a small part of your development budget to just becoming a customer. This involves creating an account and playing around a little bit, and you'll see that you have most of the features that you need.

That is what the experience has been like for me. Maybe it's not like that for everyone, but try it out. You will probably see that it's more than you might think initially, at least that's the reason that I stuck around and stayed with them for so long.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The Linode servers we have are all running Ubuntu.

We have several client websites, including several with active eCommerce options, that act as large document management systems for academic journals.

For our own use, we have a major business wiki, which we use for project planning, ISO900 compliance, and contact management, etc.

For all the sites, we also run email services, which are so simple to set up that we don't charge our clients extra to use as many as they like. We offer a webmail system with calendars, address books, etc.

Putting everything onto Linode has streamlined what we do, but with minimal risk, as we have a "clone" virtual server ready for action. We have developed scripts that make the monitoring and maintenance of the Linode virtual machines very easy, with statistics and other reports regularly emailed to a support desk throughout the day. Often, we know of any issues before the clients have noticed.

We don't make use of Linode's own backup, as we have overnight jobs that use SFTP to download essential data to a RAID array on our local network. However, we also use the Linode servers themselves as off-site storage for data generated on our local machines.

The most valuable features are the simple scalability and ease of starting a new virtual machine. Before we kept a backup, we did damage to an existing installation. We created a new machine and had the basic services back up within a short time. Now, we keep a powered-down server as a hot backup, although this does mean that we occasionally have to power it up for updates. We are looking at means of simplifying this task.

The procedures to upgrade between Linux versions are reasonably simple, but those could be a result of using Ubuntu rather than being specific to Linode.

The support service and knowledge articles supplied by Linode are very comprehensive but inevitably there are situations where a user, particularly is a "newbie" is left on his or her own.

The only improvement in this aspect of the service which I can think of is perhaps a pool of developers who could be hired for those cases where the need goes beyond the support offered. Offering this as a service would enhance the product.

All of our servers have been configured and upgraded by our own staff, which has been a good training exercise, although at times on very tight schedules when a little guidance would have helped. I do realize this is beyond the normal remit of support, which is why I am suggesting a separate pool. Perhaps Linode could approve third-party providers and take a commission of the work provided?

We have been using Linode for more than seven years.

We did use another solution prior to this, but the provider was forced to close down. It was a small organisation and didn't have the proper resources to upgrade all of its equipment when needed. The effort of maintaining a mixed server room proved too much. In fact they recommended that I moved to Linode after they announced they eventual termination of their service. 

All of it is very easy to install.

We have an in-house team for deployment and maintenance. They are responsible for the configuration and upgrades.

Pricing is very good and flexible, according to the resources required.

We did evaluate other products, however, at this remove, I cannot remember the alternatives that we looked at.

We are using Linode for hosting a website.

Linode has given us free upgrades as far as memory and storage space, so that helped us to be able to expand without any extra cost. Also, their support and stability have made us feel reliable.

The most valuable feature is the domain settings page.

The documentation is good.

I like the overall simplicity of their interfaces and their website. Everything worked as I expected and it's easier than I thought to get started with.

The stability and customer support have been very reliable.

The suitability of this solution depends on the features that you need. If you're an Uber-sized company then you're probably not going to want to start using Linode. If you are a large-sized organization then you're going to want to start using one of the bigger providers that gives you the scalability and the feature set that you are probably going to be needing in the future.

I have been using Linode for approximately 14 years.

They made it easy to upgrade the server to migrate to a bigger one very easily. Basically, there was no work on my end. I just had to choose a server to upgrade, then they automatically did it. That aspect was really good.

It is only me that works with the product. I have one server for the website and then I have another server for the database. At this point, I don't plan to increase my usage.

With respect to features, I see Linode as a better provider for smaller companies. I don't know how scalable they are compared to AWS, or whether they can scale with a faster-growing company.

The support has always had a pretty fast turnaround, they have good security, and they are very descriptive in their documentation for the resolution of solutions or problems.

Support has exceeded my expectations versus AWS.

I have also used AWS and I feel like if I had a problem, I don't have to worry about waiting for a response. This is unlike the case where I need help from AWS. With Linode, they have more personal support.

I have also worked with Google and Microsoft Azure. The large providers have a lot more features, compared to Linode. Linode is good if you just have a smaller setup or just need a few servers, but if you need to do something like offline storage, then AWS and Google have a lot of special features that not everybody needs. I see Linode as a solution for smaller companies.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I recall reading the documentation on how to secure a server and getting set up was straightforward. They had really good documentation for that, so it was fairly easy to use. The deployment took about an hour.

The value for the price is really good.

The pricing model is simple compared to AWS, as you know how much you've got to pay every month.

My impression is that I save money compared to what I would pay for other cloud providers, although there is no way for me to approximate a dollar value. I pay the same amount each month and I don't have to worry about getting a surge of traffic and having to pay extra for it.

My advice for anybody who is considering this service is to do their research, as it depends on what you need. They offer Linux in a way that's similar to DigitalOcean. Linode is one of those companies that's fairly easy to get started with, but if you have a bigger company or you're going to grow faster, you might need to consider a bigger provider. It just depends on your needs.

In summary, this is a very good product but nobody's perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I use it to host websites, including WordPress, Laravel, and Lumen.

I have hosted my website on Linode and my clients' back-end applications are running on it. One of them has a website on Shopify, and they needed an automation tool to upload products to Shopify. I developed an application that is hosted on Linode servers. It runs daily and synchronizes products with their suppliers.

The creation of instances is very good, as is their interface which is not complex and is easy to use. With the dashboard, it is easy to create a new instance and add your favorite things. You can add Debian, Ubuntu, or CentOS, or any flavor of the operating system. You can select the RAM for your instance as well.

The fact that Linode offers a small but well-focused set of cloud computing services is very important for me and for my clients. I have referred three or four clients to Linode and they are still using Linode to host their websites.

Everything is up-to-date for a small business. But for big business, they need to improve certain things. For example, there should be better security.

They also need to provide the ability to set limits. I should be able to turn off an instance at a given percentage of its capacity.

I have been using Linode for about a year.

It is very stable. It's mature now. I haven't had any issues with the services.

I love their support. If I have any issue or if my client has an issue, I just click to create a message for support and they resolve the issue or provide relevant guidance. Their support is 24/7/365.

I also use AWS and their support is very good. But Linode's support is quicker and better compared to AWS or other cloud providers. They take my problem as their problem and provide a solution very quickly.

I click on the required instance. They may have a special which only costs $5 per month. If I need that, I click on that instance. Then I choose the OS like Debian, Ubuntu, or CentOS. I then add a data center location, and then, if I need my personal PC access to the server automatically, I add that and click "next." Within 30 seconds, it is ready.

It's very cheap. The pricing model is very simple. If you have very small applications, you can use the plan which costs $5 per month. That gives you 50 GB of memory and almost 1 GB of RAM. If you need more than you have to select the next plan which is $10 per month, which has about 70 GB of data and 2 GB of RAM. I build small applications and that provides more than enough for small applications.

Taking everything into account, it has a very good price-to-performance ratio. If I use AWS, it costs more than Linode. It saves me $5 per month compared to AWS.

Many of the competitors, like AWS, have an interface that is slightly complex compared to Linode. There are no authentications or other things required in Linode. You just create your account, add your card, and do what you want to do. A non-technical person can't do AWS; you need some technical expertise to use it. But with Linode, you don't need such expertise. You can easily use and create anything on Linode.

I would recommend Linode. If you need to configure or implement applications, it is very good and fast, and saves you a lot of work compared to AWS or Azure. The interface is very simple.

I am using Linode for our cloud platform to host our enterprise solutions.

Service availability is the most valuable feature. It gives every user 100 percent uptime.

It is like in a single store for cloud solutions, which is important for us.

Right now, they don't have multiple data centers. They have limited data centers. I am currently using the Singapore and Mumbai data centers, but I am looking for data centers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. They need to improve the availability of their data centers and partnership engagements with cloud Panda solution providers, like us.

I have been using it for five years.

It does not require maintenance.

It takes two to three minutes to upgrade my plans or downgrade my services.

Right now, three of us are working on this server to manage things. However, our user base is around two million.

I sent two or three tickets for support, but I have gotten the appropriate resolutions. I would rate the support as a nine out of 10. They could improve the response time compared to AWS. 

We used AWS before Linode. 

Right now, we have four to five accounts. We are also closing our subscriptions with AWS, GCP, and Azure to save costs.

The initial setup is straightforward. In less than 30 minutes, I can set up my server and VM.

You save on your private or public cloud costs when using Linode.

Compared to other service providers, like AWS and Google, the cost of services are much less and more affordable. We are saving about 90 percent by going with Linode versus other cloud providers.

We didn't require any knowledge to host our enterprise applications on Linode. If you want to go with AWS, you need to learn their ecosystem first.

I also tried DigitalOcean. Linode is better than DigitalOcean. Linode is better in terms of creating and updating VMs. 

Even though they don't have many data centers across the globe, the speed has been good. With the help of the CDN, the speed has been good. It has a good user interface. Also, the community documentation is good.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.