Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Lightsail
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) designed to present an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan.
$3.50
per month
Linode
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Linode helps users simplify cloud infrastructure with Linux virtual machines and tools to develop, deploy, and scale applications. Linode aims to make virtual computing more accessible, affordable, and simple. The vendor states the Linode infrastructure-as-a-service platform is deployed across 11 global markets from data centers around the world and is supported by a Next Generation Network, advanced APIs, comprehensive services, and a library of educational resources. Linode products,…
$0
Monthly or Hourly
Pricing
Amazon LightsailLinode
Editions & Modules
512 MB Linux
$3.50
per month
1 GB Linux
$5.00
per month
2 GB Linux
$10.00
per month
Dedicated CPU 4 GB RAM
$30/month or $0.05/hour
N/A
Dedicated CPU 8 GB RAM
$60/month or $0.09/hour
N/A
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon LightsailLinode
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details—CPU, transfer, storage, and RAM bundled into one simple price. Increase storage capacity with additional Block Storage or S3-compatible Object Storage. Add instant Backups with complete independency to your stack. Ensure your applications and services are highly-available with Linode NodeBalancers. Deploy Kubernetes clusters with our fully-managed container orchestration engine.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon LightsailLinode
Considered Both Products
Amazon Lightsail
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Linode and Digital Ocean are far more reliable than Amazon Lightsail. I would recommend against hosting any production applications in Lightsail. Even for prototyping, I would also suggest using the VPS provider of your choice for your production application because you can …
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is ideal for beginners looking for a low-cost VPS to try out new things. It's especially useful if you're at a hackathon and need a quick way to prototype a quick idea. I would never recommend Lightsail for any kind of production work. In terms of uptime, …
Linode
Chose Linode
Linode is cheaper than UpCloud, but disk IO is significantly slower. Linode and DigitalOcean pricing is on par, as are server specs. DO has more services like managed databases, but Linode support has proved significantly more helpful. Linode servers give you significantly more …
Chose Linode
I am still evaluating DigitalOcean Droplets as their pricepoint has moved more towards Linode, but so far I am leaning back towards Linode. They also don't have the GPU machines. But they do have a wider range of options for CPU. At present if you do lscpu on Linode it lists …
Chose Linode
I've tried all of Digital Ocean, AWS EC2 and AWS Lightsail - I found Linode to give the best price/performance for a VPS. However, compared to serverless functions like AWS Lambda, there's a lot of maintenance work if you want to keep your VPS up-to-date. If you're looking for …
Chose Linode
Linode is faster, with no overselling.
Chose Linode
Linode is cheaper, more reliable, and easier than the others. Customer service is of better quality as well.
Chose Linode
The cost-benefit ratio, along with ease of use and unsurpassed technical support, make Linode our choice.
Chose Linode
We had previously used inMotion's shared hosting, so when we started to outgrow that service we considered using their VPS option. We found that it would be more expensive than Linode, and not as powerful.

We considered Amazon EC2, but it is much easier to get started with …
Chose Linode
After evaluation, Linode is still cheaper. We want it cheap and predictable (until we raise Series A).
Chose Linode
Linode stands tall for Ease of Use and Developer Friendliness. The plans and pricing slabs makes it tough to resist from competition. Also as we get what we are subscribed to, unlike providers like AWS stealing our CPU during high demands, we don’t face issues due to noisy …
Chose Linode
Linode vs. DigitalOcean is one of the closest competitions in the cloud computing industry that I have seen. When it comes to the two I see that the pricing is very very similar and the performance is also very similar. The difference comes with the company culture, support, …
Chose Linode
Vultr has probably the best datacenter distribution in America and Europe, and even Oceania is very well covered. Unfortunately it lacks an Indian datacenter, and performance is poor in some locations. it lacks support for some services like Kubernetes and object storage …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon LightsailLinode
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
9.0
5 Ratings
8% above category average
Linode
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.75 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.75 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.85 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support9.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.75 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation9.64 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon LightsailLinode
Small Businesses
Linode
Linode
Score 9.2 out of 10
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon LightsailLinode
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
(5 ratings)
9.4
(212 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(11 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(13 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(211 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(6 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon LightsailLinode
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We utilized Amazon Lightsail to get a web application proof of concept up and running. It's easy to set up, requires minimal configuration, and lets us to concentrate on the coding. It's designed to help you get started fast and easily, but it's not designed for corporate applications or workloads.
Read full review
Linode
Linode provides a wide range of configurations and prices, suitable for many budgets and needs. They also have a lot of experience in providing these services for many years. We have almost exclusively used Debian distributions for our work, but they offer a large number of other versions of Linux. Beside "raw" distributions of Linux, they also offer other VMs containing specialized installations of a variety of applications, such as Wordpress, Drupal and Docker.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • static web hosting & non public managments
  • low cost remote access
  • media distribution
Read full review
Linode
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • slow
  • complex integration to AWS Cloudwatch - complex setup required
  • No IPv6, a big downside
  • less value compared with Linode or Digital Ocean
Read full review
Linode
  • I have not succeeded in using the DNS of Linode with a website not hosted in their server. I hope their DNS is as user-friendly as DO and Vultr.
  • Cloud storage user interface is not as easy as DO. I want to see their cloud storage on a pay-per-usage scheme, not monthly.
  • For VPS, I wish Linode to increase the SSD space storage of their basic VPS larger than those of competitors.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Linode
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.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Linode
It's pretty easy for me, but I preferred their old interface before it was called 'cloud' (not a computer science term.) The new interface looks easier but I had to ask for help for things I used to be able to find myself. If someone was new to it--without having used their old interface--it might be easier for them than it originally was for me.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Linode
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.
Read full review
Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Linode
Linode is an infrastructure provider issues related to performance are really on me. Linode provides a capable infrastructure and allows me to tailor performance of the services I provide to my customers to my specific situation. Linode allows me to implement "tweaks" that, from experience, I know will do the job with little risk without a whole bunch of static from idiot support 'droids who just get in the way ("this isn't supported at the present time").
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Linode
Support from Linode has always been excellent for us. We've barely had to wait any time between ticket requests and replies, and we've always received replies that actually answered our problems. Whenever maintenance has occurred on Linode's side, they've always alerted us beforehand and left a ticket open as a source of communication in case we had any issues after maintenance or any other questions that we needed answered.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Linode
I wish it hadn't taken as many iterations as it did. Some of it is my own fault and some of it was related to limitations imposed on me by the programming environment I chose to use. All in all, I'd say I did a pretty good job. I'd stack my homegrown spam defenses up against anyone's!
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality assurance tasks, and provide much more efficient and better apps with our microservices architecture.
Read full review
Linode
Compared to the big cloud players like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, MS Azure, Oracle Cloud, and co., Linode's product is simpler and cheaper. For quick and straightforward client engagements, the power and flexibility afforded by the previously mentioned vendors are overkill. Compared specifically to some of its closest rivals: Versus DigitalOcean, Linode has better pricing for VMs; while compared to Vultr, while Vultr's backups are cheaper (20% of VM cost versus effective ~25% of VM cost), Vultr's DDoS protection is an add-on product, which made the overall cost of the deployment more expensive. The runner-up competitor for our use cases, Hetzner, offers superior pricing; However due to their flaky KYC and anti-fraud which was a pain to deal with, I lost faith in them. They also do not have a region in East Asia, which would impact performance.
Read full review
Scalability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Linode
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Saved a lot of time on set up and configuration
  • Saved money on trial period
  • Customer service was less helpful
Read full review
Linode
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Linode Screenshots

Screenshot of Manage all of your Linode resources in one easy interface.Screenshot of In Cloud Manager, you can easily create Linode instances, managed Kubernetes clusters, add backups to your Linodes, deploy Marketplace Apps, create Object Storage buckets, and more.Screenshot of Deploy Kubernetes clusters with our fully-managed container orchestration engine.Screenshot of Dedicated CPU instances run on their own CPU cores in the Linode infrastructure. No sharing the processor with other instances.Screenshot of We're reshaping how cloud service providers are supporting partners. Our Partner Program provides a growth path for businesses to receive additional benefits as they scale the Linode Cloud.