Know Linux? Need Linux? Linode may be your option
February 25, 2021

Know Linux? Need Linux? Linode may be your option

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Linode

All company infrastructure is cloud based, but for some particular developments and testing stages for some projects we required a "self managed server" in which we could install, test, deploy or manage every context of our web applications.
In that sense Linode is a perfect match, Linux servers, custom configuration, self managed, and a very attractive price tier. It does requiere some advanced command line Linux user expertise, but it worths every penny.

Pros

  • Very attractive price tier
  • Simple startup configuration
  • Excellent documentation
  • Impressive official support channel response timing
  • Extensive community
  • Backed up by open source solutions

Cons

  • Application deployment ala big vendor style
  • A Linode cli command line application would be mindblowing
  • Single click apps are not enough
  • Integration with Cloudflare DNS could be simpler
  • Positive: App deployments are faster than on our current Cloud Provider
  • Positive: Debugging or hot fixing issues on deployed apps is faster than deploying the app (Warning: Don't do this at home)
  • Positive: Install what you need, the limit is the available space (vs limited space for some cloud deployments)
  • Negative: Requires some Linux expertise, or at least the ability of following a tutorial and reversing steps (in case of mistakes or errors)
  • Negative: Management areas in the organization may require time to consider Linode trustworthy enough (this happens when the management is not directly related with IT)
Digital Ocean offers similar services that include self managed Linux instances. Their price tier is similar to Linode, but Linode has a new user 100 USD credit that makes the first steps more appealing.
In Chile, Hostnet offers a Linux instance service on a comparable price tier. The problem is that the server management is handled by Hostnet, and that was a powerful reason for not considering it over Linode.
The times I've required explicit support from Linode I've received a response in no more than 24 hours.
Considering our Linux expertise, and the type of applications we are hosting, it's good enough. Worst case there's always a community forum that can help in many ways.
Other important point to consider is that no organization will opt-in for a self managed server if it's not capable of self manage the server, and that includes somehow a level of technical support that may be required. From this point of view, Linode is more dev-friendly than management friendly.
Linode is perfect if your team has certain Linux expertise, and if you require full control of your app deployments. NodeJS APIs or single page applications served through an NGINX proxy run flawlessly on a well configured Linode node, with an exceptional performance.
Linode may not be the best option if your organization development workflows are completely cloud based (eg AWS, Google Cloud, Heroku, or any Cloud Foundry flavor).
As Linode requires no fear of the command line, some users will feel that every task on these kind of servers is far more complicated that other alternatives.

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