Akamai Cloud Computing vs. DigitalOcean vs. Google Compute Engine

Akamai Connected Cloud Linode would be a good service to host a content delivery network (CDN) because of its edge network but I'd prefer not to use Akamai Connected Cloud Linode for tasks that need GPU power such as Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence (AI) because Akamai Connected Cloud Linode lacks deep GPU compute compared to AWS or Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure

DigitalOcean is perfect for hosting client websites, running marketing tools, and managing media storage with Spaces and CDN. The use of Droplets to quickly launch landing pages or WordPress sites for campaigns is a Godsend. It’s great for fast, cheap, and scalable solutions. But for complex microservices or projects needing strict compliance (like HIPAA), DigitalOcean may not always be the best fit, but that depends heavily on your project.

Incentivized

You can use Google Cloud Compute Engine as an option to configure your Gitlab, GitHub, and Azure DevOps self-hosted runners. This allows full control and management of your runners rather than using the default runners, which you cannot manage. Additionally, they can be used as a workspace, which you can provide to the employees, where they can test their workloads or use them as a local host and then deploy to the actual production-grade instance.

Incentivized

• It's super easy-to-use - set up a complete virtual environment in a few minutes.
• Linode is the ONLY service I know that will let you DOWNSIZE a VM - super useful.
• The price is right - spin up any size server and add additional block storage if needed.
• Object memory is cheap and integrates very well with S3 CLIs and applications.
• I've been very happy with the knowledgeable and friendly customer service.
• The more recent additions of a firewall and Kubernetes is a welcome plus.
• The load balancer ("Load Balancer") service is easy to spin up and configure.

Incentivized

• DigitalOcean provides some of the best cost-to-value services available
• The DigitalOcean cloud console is very intuitive and easy to navigate
• DigitalOcean has great support for Docker and other dev ops tools like Terraform.
• DigitalOcean iterates quickly and provides cutting edge features for organizations that want to keep up with the latest and greatest dev ops tooling
• DigitalOcean has a great developer community and numerous support docs/tutorials

Incentivized

• Scaling - whether it's traffic spikes or just steady growth, Google Compute Engine's auto-scaling makes sure we've got the compute power we need without any manual juggling acts
• Load balancing - Keeping things smooth with that load balancing across multiple VMs, so our users don't have to deal with slow load times or downtime even when things get crazy busy
• Customizability - Mix and match configs for CPU, RAM, storage and whatnot to suit our specific app needs

Incentivized

• Some of the documentation requires some hand-holding to get started. It does explain how to do things, but sometimes finding the answer takes work.
• Some of the settings are not obvious, or in locations that are not completely clear without experience.

Incentivized

• Some products/services available on other Cloud providers aren't available, but they seem to be catching up as they add new products like Managed SQL DBs.
• While they have FreeBSD droplets (VMs), support for *BSD OSs is limited. I.e. the new monitoring agent only works on Linux.
• There are no regions available on South America.
• They don't seem to offer enterprise-level products, even basic ones as Windows Server, MS SQL Server, Oracle products, etc.

Incentivized

• Built-in monitoring via Stackdriver is quite expensive for what it provides.
• Initially provided quotas (ie. max compute units one can use) are very low and it took several requests to get an appropriate amount.
• Support on GCE is limited to their knowledge base and forums. For more hands-on support provided by Google, you must pay for their Premium services.

Incentivized

I've been with them a long time. They provide me with the capabilities I need coupled with knowledgeable support that's not pay-for-extra. However, if I move to a non-Linux OS, the level of support by necessity will drop off. I can still ask questions about the infrastructure but I my ability to ask about OS features will decrease.

Incentivized

I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!

Incentivized

Its pretty good, easy and good performance. Also, interface is very good for starters compared to competitors. Infra as Code (IaC) using Terraform even added easiness for creation, management and deletion of compute Virtual Machines (VM). Overall, very good and very easy cloud based compute platform which simplified infrastructure, very much recommend.

Incentivized

Simple and clear, no BS interface. From a design perspective it's no Apple or Stripe, but it does what it needs without making me want to stick a fork in my eyes, like when being forced to use Azure, AWS or GCP.

Incentivized

I honestly can't think of an easier way to set up and maintain your own server. Being able to set up a server in minutes and have fully control is awesome. The UX is incredibly intuitive for first-time users as well so there's no reason to be intimidated when it comes to giving DigitalOcean a shot.

Incentivized

Having interacted with several cloud services, GCE stands out to me as more usable than most. The naming and locating of features is a little more intuitive than most I've interacted with, and hinting is also quite helpful. Getting staff up to speed has proven to be overall less painful than others.

Incentivized

There is very little planned downtime. Whenever planned downtime is necessary I'm always given lots of advanced notice and an explanation that I can pass along to my users that they'll understand. I really appreciate that Linode appreciates my commitment to reliable service to my users. It shows that they believe they've been successful when I'm successful.

Incentivized

Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.

Incentivized

Google Compute Engine works well for cloud project with lesser geographical audience. It sometimes gives error while everything is set up perfectly. We also keep on check any updates available because that's one reason of site getting down. Google Compute Engine is ultimately a top solution to build an app and publish it online within a few minutes

Incentivized

Servers are well dimensioned and price performant. Of course one always wants more, so if they were to upgrade their hardware for the same price I'd consider moving more workloads. Networking - never had an issue. Hardware speeds - disks are fast and can grow to great size.

Incentivized

Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.

Incentivized

It works great all the time except for occasional issues, but overall, I am very happy with the performance. It delivers on the promise it makes and as per the SLAs provided. Networking is great with a premium network, and AZs are also widespread across geographies. Overall, it is a great infra item to have, which you can scale as you want.

Incentivized

Support was excellent and fast. The documentation is extensive and helpful. I learned many things from their online documentation. I did not contact them by phone, but email took a day or less. Complex problems would probably need a service contract. I liked the friendly and polite tone of the support.

Incentivized

They have always been fast, and the process has been straight-forward. I haven't had to use it enough to be frustrated with it, to be honest, and when I have an issue they fix it. As with all support, I wish it felt more human, but they are doing aces.

Incentivized

• The documentation needs to be better for intermediate users - There are first steps that one can easily follow, but after that, the documentation is often spotty or not in a form where one can follow the steps and accomplish the task. Also, the documentation and the product often go out of sync, where the commands from the documentation do not work with the current version of the product.
• Google support was great and their presence on site was very helpful in dealing with various issues.

Incentivized

We got kick started with an initial walkthrough along with some free credits. The initial walkthrough helped us to understand Linode's ecosystem and start our hands on with Linode. We tried out some apps from Marketplace initially with the free credits, which not only helped us understand Linode better, but also those apps. We had implemented many such apps to our customers with Linode

Incentivized

We're a small organization. The implementation of our Linode solution was trivial. Once I justified a cloud server to my bosses over a co-location -- the co-lo wasn't as fast as our linode server in load tests -- it was a matter of moving one Linux implementation to another. Trivial.

Incentivized

We switched to Linode from Namecheap due to poor uptime, and never had any issues with stability ever again after switching. We also cut our costs in half by switching. We compared Linode to DigitalOcean and Vultr, with the primary factor that caused us to go with Linode initially being their documentation. After using Linode for 3 years, their amazing support is another reason why we wouldn't consider anyone else at this point.

Incentivized

DigitalOcean is an inexpensive product as compared to other products available in the market. The UI is easy and the beginner can also understand the UI with the step by step guide. It provides a lot of custom features and the user needs to pay only for what they are using. Amazon has a complex UI and is on the expensive side. DigitalOcean is simple to use and is easily manageable and the servers can easily be set up without additional cost and such.

Incentivized

Google Compute Engine provides a one stop solution for all the complex features and the UI is better than Amazon's EC2 and Azure Machine Learning for ease of usability. It's always good to have an eco-system of products from Google as it's one of the most used search engine and IoT services provider, which helps with ease of integration and updates in the future.

Incentivized

Although I use only a fraction of their product offerings, the total set makes scalability an easy goal to shoot for. As I said, I have a few customers that use the services my Linode provides...and I like it that way. However, should I need to scale up, I can...without incurring any more cost than I need to.

Incentivized

Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.

Incentivized

It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.

Incentivized

• With the partnership of Linode, Configr is today the best performance hosting solution in Brazil.
• With Linode, Configr can provide a PaaS solution without the cost of taking care of all the infrastructure issues such as IaaS.
• Linode allowed Configr to be one of the biggest hosting companies in Brazil.

Incentivized

• Positive - Elastic computer instances make it possible to pay for only for what you need.
• Positive - Competitive pricing - some of the products that DigitalOcean offers are much cheaper than those offered by competitors.
• Negative - Having to go to other cloud computing platforms for more specific, advanced services like Computer Vision optimized services, GPU cloud compute instances, etc...

Incentivized

• With Google Compute we don't have the overhead of managing our own data centers reducing costs and reducing the staff needed to manage systems.
• As I said earlier, Google's costs are ~1/2 of AWS, so we are able to see a ROI much faster.

Incentivized