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Ask HN: Linode vs. DigitalOcean in 2018

25 points by richjdsmith ↗ HN
I'm currently looking at my options for a VPS for a SaaS I'm building and from what I can tell (with my very basic understanding of servers and performance), they're nearly identical (https://joshtronic.com/2018/10/15/vps-showdown-october-2018/).

Any other points I should be taking into consideration?

25 comments

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x0hm
Both are very, very easy to use.

Both have a very, very cheap option.

I'd say that all things being equal, you should spin up a server on each of them and see which one is easier to work with for you.

Personally, I use DO.

tdfx
I've used both and I don't think you can go wrong with either. However, I found DO's API to be somewhat easier to use.
mkobar
We use both for small and production projects.

I have found DO to have more additional features, but we use few of them.

The new DO K8 support looks interesting as we currently use Openshift (Red Hat), IBM, AWS and Google.

dangerboysteve
I would go with D/O as they have everything Linenode seems to have and they have a kubernetes solution they are opening up to everyone (soon) and they will also offer managed Postgres and Mysql databases as a service in the future. And you can upload your own images.

https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/ https://try.digitalocean.com/dbaas-beta/ https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/

beatgammit
I'm super excited about the managed Postgres instances, and that might be enough to pull me back to their service, especially if it can grow in CPU, memory, instances, and storage as needed.
rossdavidh
I have used Linode for over a decade, and never had a problem.
kaixi
If you are in Europe, go with Hetzner.
atmosx
My experience with Hetzner support has been poor, to say the least. I had the exact opposite experience of Linode and DO.

Last time I used Linode, IIRC their API was limited compared to DO, it was more than a year ago.

thibautg
I’m using a 4.83€/month (incl. VAT) VM from OVH to host 5 very low traffic websites in a Debian VM. No problem so far.

But I’ve used the tutorials from Digital Ocean to learn how to configure and secure it. They are very clear and well written.

wprapido
For us Europeans, Scaleway is even better
thisisrajat
I have used Digital Ocean and Linode both in the past and have not found any major differences between the two of them. I have found Linode servers slightly more efficient but the speed tradeoff is negligible as compared to what Digital Ocean provides as a service. I really like the Floating IP and the fact that load balancer rules are so easy to create.

Again, it depends on you and your use case. I'd personally use Linode if the project is one off which I'd deploy and forget. DO if I am spinning 2-3 servers.

tedmiston
Do you anticipate making use of DO's feature beyond running raw droplets? For example, their Kubernetes support or one-click images.

I have not used Linode in a long time but DO has really nice product offerings these days as long as you don't require a true VPC.

I really like DO's predictable building compared to AWS and to some degree GCP.

borplk
> Any other points I should be taking into consideration?

Yes.

Linode has a poor security track record (and culture .. wink wink) and a tradition of chronically getting owned.

AND every time they come out like "lulz everything secure now no problemo here dis last time for sure promise"

apacheCamel
Would you be willing to show some recent security failures? Whenever I searched, I found a few things from 2016 but that seemed like the latest thing. 2 years is a good bit of time without any incidences.
nik736
They still are using their old CF manager.
ksec
Linode is still a little better in Hardware Spec, but DO has caught up to all other advantage that it used to hold. IPv6, Private Networking, pooled bandwidth etc. Its block storage and Space offer CDN by default and its faster than Linode. It now has Managed DB solution in beta. At the rate things are going there will be no reason to choose Linode over DO next year.

You could also take a look at upcloud, which is also very good.

I could only wish next year upgrade of DO will up the CPU optimised Droplet to 1:1 CPU Ram Ratio.

croo
If you are considering other options take a look at Ramnode. My experience with them was great both with support and a little server with an uptime of 2 year or so.
virtualmemory
Give aws light sail a try. I would prefer Linode than DO.
nik736
I've reviewed Lightsail and it's throttled heavily:

https://www.karoly.io/amazon-lightsail-review-2018/

kohanz
I'm surely missing something, but how this is a bad thing for an average user. Surely the idea behind throttling is to protect users on shared instances from bad actors that are hogging resources beyond a reasonable amount. Running the CPU at 100% for 30 minutes, or do similar actions with the disk or network would degrade performance for everyone else and I would want my cloud provider to address that. I would be shocked if DO and Linode did not also have such a safety feature in place.
dnksoc
has anyone experienced Linode or DO doing any such throttling?
barrow-rider
I switched to DO from Vultr a couple years back. No ragerts as they say.

Aside from the FreeBSD options, the other reason I went to DO was that a former sysadmin I used to work with went over there as support lead and had good things to say when I poked them.

Heard good things about Linode, but also not so good things due to a couple security incidents back in the day.