New price increase: Is anyone else NOT feeling the love?

Unfortunately, I would say that Linode's service has been declining for some time, before Akamai purchased them. When they started adding more services like object storage, block storage, one-click installs, etc, I think their quality started to decrease, as is common for companies that provide many different services. Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if this trend is a continuing one, not only among Linode.

I wish there were more companies out there that provided just the basics, VPS servers and a couple network services, perhaps, such as IPV6 networking with routed /56 networks, and Arch Linux as an operating system that's supported, along with out of band ssh access over a serial console. All of that was offered when Linode added IPV6 to their network and had much less than they do now, so far as services are concerned. And, in my opinion, their quality was better than it is now, even when they added KVM virtualization. I do have a feeling that the smaller players like myself and others who want more simplicity and less features will probably be lost in the big enterprise customers and companies down the line. I'll stick with Linode for now, but I'm still going to keep my options open for the future, and depending on what happens next, may migrate some things away from them.

To add to the question here, does anyone know of any good alternatives? I have considered Vultr because they offer the most important thing I want, support for Arch Linux. Unfortunately, there are other things they lack such as out of band SSH access over a serial console on the virtual machine, something that only Linode seems to offer.

And at the moment, I'd have to say that, no, I'm not particularly feeling the love, even though I knew this was coming eventually.

@tech10 writes:

I do have a feeling that the smaller players like myself and others who want more simplicity and less features will probably be lost in the big enterprise customers and companies down the line.

I'm prob the smallest of small operators. My Linode provides email & shared calendar/contacts for myself and family (4 users total). I've been a Linode customer for 10 years. I manage everything.

I'll stick with Linode for now, but I'm still going to keep my options open for the future, and depending on what happens next, may migrate some things away from them.

Yeah…me too. I can mitigate the price increase for my Linode by switching my block storage partition to object storage. I use block storage to store my own online backups…but object storage is not offered in the Fremont, CA (SF Bay Area) datacenter (the closest to the West Coast is Atlanta -- increased network latency!).

I have considered Vultr because they offer the most important thing I want, support for Arch Linux.

I've looked at them too. They support FreeBSD. My Linode runs FreeBSD 13.1 so I get zero support. This is also why my I run my own backups (Linode's backup system only works with ext3/ext4 filesystems). While FreeBSD can use both of those, the question would be "Why?" FFS (the "old" fast file system) is more performant than either ext3/3xt4) and ZFS is both more performant and more capable…

Vultr has datacenters in Silicon Valley and Seattle (I live in Portland) but only supports object storage at Silicon Valley. Of course, Vultr's automatic backups would support my FreeBSD instance so I'd have no need for object storage for backups.

One outfit NO ONE should consider is Digital Ocean. They say they have rules but I'd be hard pressed to find any examples of enforcement. IMHO, DO is the premier home for script kiddies, spammers and other assorted bad actors. I've had DO's ASN blocked in my firewall configuration for many years.

And at the moment, I'd have to say that, no, I'm not particularly feeling the love, even though I knew this was coming eventually.

Nor am I… Since my application domain is so small, I'm also considering just using my domain with Google Workspace or iCloud+ and giving up managing my own server altogether.

-- sw

Been with Linode for over 18yrs, this 20% increase is pure greed and absolutely nothing else, this was the nail in the coffin for me. You want to jack your prices up 20% overnight on me? What's 20% of 0 again because in the next couple of weeks all my linodes will move to another provider. Good bye and good luck everyone. It was nice while it lasted.

I run only a couple services for myself that a Nanode was more than enough for, but just for the heck of it I was paying the $20 tier. I planned on adding a few things over time and was slowly working my way to it, but now after this announcement I've decided to scrap all my plans and scale back to a Nanode.

To body slam us costumers like this with only one month anticipation is rather unwelcoming. I'm seriously considering moving away to another service.

Not happy with this decision by Linode. I am shopping too. ( and change the title - prepend "price change" ). It will get more users to give their feedback and maybe Linode will get the message.

Hey @padyclay6 - there's no need to change the title of this post. Akamai and Linode have been passing any customer feedback we've seen, including through tickets, Community Questions posts like this one, and various social media channels. I can't promise a change to any recent news, though I can say that we're doing this to help inform any other changes we may make to our platform. And not to worry, there are no other major changes that I'm aware of on the horizon.

and change the title - prepend "price change"

Good idea… done and done.

As for the 20% increase… all I know is that it makes a bunch of excellent managed hosting companies (i.e. Pair Networks) now competitive with Linode.

For many of us we "trade" a low price for doing our own admin.

With this new rate increase I can now get a comparable server from a 'managed' company and not have to do any admin.

Of course, some people really need root/sudo privileges but those of us with simple needs really don't require root and we will get no value received from Akamai by paying $96 more a year ($40 x .20 = $8 x 12 = $96) than we do now. For that money we should get SOMETHING… and we are not.

I don't know what others will do but I'll keep my $5 'test' server but will give up my $40 Linode and move to a managed VPS host. With the 20% increase the small savings in price between the un-managed and managed does not make enough difference to stay. I'll go to a managed server company and let 'them' deal with admin chores!

It is a simple comparison between cost and value received.

My guess is that Akamai is taking the position that "Just like when a bank has a client with direct deposit and recurring payments, it is such a pain for them to change banks that they just stay no matter what the fees are."

Basically it is also a "pain" to move to a new server company… so Akamai figures that most people will just "suck it up" and pay the extra money… getting nothing in return.

Not me. If you raise your price by 20% you better give me something in return… or I leave your service or find a substitute product.

YMMV.

Not much of a surprise. Figured this was going to come at anytime. Why not use the backdrop of the current economy as a reason to bump up the prices. My experience in the past with Akamai's CDN is that they charge a premium. Their stuff is great and top notch but the pricing is out of reach for the small guy.

Linode always advertised itself as being for developers. We can see that this is changing. Little by little, we will be forced to look at other solutions for testing and developing.

I was already on the fence about leaving my instances here since I do have a new favorite provider, already mentioned above. The pricing was similar and rather than having all my eggs in one basket, I was splitting between the two.

Oh well. It was a great run and a company needs to make money. Great for the competition.

Later

There's a fantastic HN thread happening here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34982647

Akamai seems to think that they're competitors with AWS and the like. Maybe they should read their own material:

https://www.linode.com/aws-vs-linode/

I would say that most people on Linode are like me - we're here because we're not "AWS Devops" people trained in clicking buttons in a console. We're here because we're much closer to the metal, doing things ourselves. All we want is the power on and a terminal. Yet suddenly it seems Akamai is on a path to ramp up its prices to match Amazon et al despite being a fundamentally different type of product offering.

Oh well. The HN link has some great price comparisons showing that, thanks to this change, there's a multitude of alternatives that are significantly cheaper.

Edit: For Linode / Akamai employees - someone should get in touch with what's happening in the cloud space. Everyone, including leaders from top tech companies, are publicly bemoaning how cloud providers have gone insane with their prices. Most companies just fired boatloads of people, meaning there is a mass restructuring happening in the tech sector. If you think the trend of people paying $160,000.00/yr for a Devops person to click buttons in a cloud provider that charges five or six figures a month just to host infra is going to persist, you're in for a rude awakening.

Linode, esp with LKE, would have been positioned as a good alternative for people looking to get away from the bloodletters. It seems to be instead branding itself as one of them.

We are switching too. Currently looking at Vultr but will probably go back to AWS as with a bit of autoscaling work we’ll be able to match our current linode bill.

.i.. akamai

Seriously considering all other options as well.

I've been a Linode customer for six or seven years. I have two Linodes… a tiny $5 ($50/yr) linode and an expensive Linode which I pay $600 a year for.

This week I've moved everything on my large Linode to a new server with a different company.

Akamai was greedy and wanted $8 more a month or $96 a year. I could easily afford it, but I refuse to 'give in' to greed. I want a company that VALUES me as a customer. When a company raises rates by 20% it is hard to see "the value"

So for $96 they lost a $600 account.

I'll probably keep my $5 Linode which I use to just test stuff with… but I have canceled the expensive one.

Bottom line Akamai can't defend a 20% price increase and you might notice that they have not even tried. I agree with others who have said that Akamai wants to get rid of small clients like many of us and just go for the 'big fish' enterprise clients.

I don't know if they can attract some of the Amazon, Microsoft and IBM client-base, but they are doing a good job getting rid of the 'small fish' clients like me.

Another teeny-tiny scale lone hobby tinkerer here (who's progressed into it being actual work)… Nah, not feeling it at all. Also feel, and accept, that due to this 'scale' Akami will not give two hoots!

Be using up my remaining credit building and burning with packer/terraform, and then just pick one of the other providers and adapt to them.

Might as well be Oracle blink-blink, the Ampere instances are quite generous, in terms of what I could do with it, and despite my misgivings they've yet to charge me anything using them… . It's more complex but at least they've always been shysters. Know where I stand

Yeah, checking for alternatives too. So sad… I really enjoyed Linode.