Dead simple to get started with, and a pleasure to use.
March 15, 2021
Dead simple to get started with, and a pleasure to use.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Linode
We use Linode for our web hosting platform and other publicly accessible operations, both for our clients and our own use. Prior to moving to Linode, we had been spending ungodly sums of money on dedicated servers, that as well as being expensive, also proved to be inflexible when we needed to grow or shrink our resources. The switch to virtual private servers with Linode gave us the ability to quickly spin up new instances when we need them, whilst remaining utterly simple to use, and at a fraction of the cost.
- Incredibly simple to get started with. We found everything to be intuitive and logical, especially compared to AWS!
- Pricing is dead simple. Choose your plan, select any optional extras, and you're done. No hidden prices and/or surprise costs.
- Approachable and helpful staff. I remember when I was first looking at moving to Linode; I joined the Linode IRC channel to ask a few questions and ended up speaking with the CEO at the time! It was the straightforward, no-nonsense response to my questions that day that sold me.
- Struggling to think of any negatives but one thing I think would be very nice to have, would be a Linode podcast to cover cloud news, industry best practices, anecdotes, etc.
- The switch from co-located dedicated servers to Linode VPS cut our server costs by approximately 80%. We literally spend only around 20% of what we used to!
- Our response times for spinning up new servers [have] improved massively. Instead of spending a whole day setting up a new dedicated server, we can add a VPS to our network in minutes.
- The time saved by not having to deal with dedicated servers or AWS's complexity has allowed us to focus resources on other areas of the business.
I have used both Linode and Amazon Web Services (AWS), in similar roles. The ease of use and barrier to entry is like night and day between the two. With AWS, I was facing a steep learning curve, hidden costs buried in [small print,] and a feeling that managing AWS was going to be a full-time operation. In contrast, Linode offers me all the services I require, with a much easier-to-understand pricing scheme and a really intuitive onboarding experience. I feel like I know Linode inside out, it's that simple to use, [whereas] with AWS, I always feel like I'm missing some important details that will trip me up later.
Prior to using Linode, we paid to have dedicated servers co-located in a datacenter. This was expensive, especially for a small business like my own, but at the time, a necessary evil. When I first experimented with transitioning to Linode, I felt the pricing was going to be too good to be true and was unsure if the cost savings would materialize like they appeared to be on paper. I was very happily surprised when we cut our server costs by approximately 80%, without any drop in service quality.
One of the main uses we have for Linode is in providing web hosting services to our customers. If a customer website goes down, we'll have a very unhappy customer within minutes! I can gladly report that in the 8 or 9 years we've been hosting services with Linode, downtime has been incredibly minimal. If I remember correctly, we had one or two days a few years ago that caused some downtime due to a large-scale DDoS attack on Linode, but even that was dealt with efficiently. Other than that, the only downtime I can think of is when a VPS image has had to be moved to a new server due to a hardware issue, which has to be expected [from] time to time. All of this was handled by Linode without me having to do anything, and I was informed of progress during the entire event (that lasted mere minutes).