Item: Akamai Cloud Computing
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Linode

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Linode handles our hosting for a variety of applications, including incubating web applications to be marketed and intranet utilities. In a pinch, it sometimes also serves as a temporary remote desktop for contractors.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Customer service has always been knowledgeable enough to help us make decisions.
Prices are reasonable and Linode has fought to stay competitive.
Servers have been exceptionally stable.

Cons

Disk space quotas are insufficient for significant work, and block storage is too expensive
While fine for us, leaving an average user to manage a Linux system is a recipe for frustration
It would be great if the parameters for each VPS could be purchased/modified separately; some projects warrant a large CPU and low bandwidth, others the opposite
If a user runs a relay of some sort (such as Tor), it tends to cause problems where the user is legally responsible for any traffic passing through, but all abuse claims are filtered through Linode, frustrating them and delaying results.

Return on Investment

This may no longer be relevant to new customers, but Linode had the only VPS services available when we started out. The choices were literally renting hardware services for many times the cost or web hosts with little flexibility. So, Linode made the business possible.
Consistent pricing has made it trivial to plan releases, knowing exactly how much revenue is needed to keep the service running.
The ability to spin up a tiny Linux computer has made it possible to try all sorts of experiments on a tiny budget.

Alternatives Considered

We have some experience with products like AWS and Azure. While they aren't an apples-to-apples comparison, ideally being put to different uses, Linode VPSs are far easier to understand, given that it's "just a computer." If used carefully, Linode can be somewhat cheaper, as well. Many years ago, we also evaluated many physical hosting facilities (most of which are no longer in business), and Linode provided better service at prices that were an order of magnitude lower.

Support Rating

We haven't needed Linode's support very often, and given the fringe ideas that we've experimented with, they haven't always had complete answers, but we've never had any support technician be anything but completely courteous and interested enough in our projects to learn almost as much as we did about the field to make sure they could eventually get us an answer.

Key Insights

Do you think Akamai Cloud Computing delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Akamai Cloud Computing's feature set?

Yes

Did Akamai Cloud Computing live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Akamai Cloud Computing go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Akamai Cloud Computing again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Azure, Rackspace Colocation Services

Likelihood to Recommend

We find Linode perfect for prototyping, simple web hosting, and as a temporary computer for short-term projects. In those cases, I don't think there has been any hesitation in recommending it to others. If the project requires large data storage, high reliability in the face of disasters, or the ability to only run when requested, a VPS is the wrong product. Similarly, if someone is only hosting static resources, a VPS is a good base, but there are cheaper products that require less management.

Linode has been the winner for over a decade