Thoughts on other, cheaper providers
http://www.lowendbox.com/
I know the customer service with Linode is top notch, and my downtime in the Newark DC has been almost non-existent, but I wonder what causes Linode to be $20/month for the base plan when others are providing more for less. Is it just the customer service?
Appreciate the input, as I said, I'm pretty new to the VPS world
Thanks!
17 Replies
Quality systems cost money, and there's no way around it other than being careful where you buy parts. And for servers, it's rare to find a sale on high-grade parts.
Most providers only provide a single core and make you pay extra for multiple, linode give you 4 out of the box this is a big factor for me since I run a lot of parallel processes.
Another factor is disk IO, linodes disks which I believe are 15k rpm sas drives in raid 10 are blindingly quick, I've not found a provider with equivalent performance at the same cost.
Last time I benchmarked (using my own benchmarks since real world benchmarks applied to the specific application are the best to use) linode were the best value for money in the linux world, joyent's smartos did perform reallllllly well but I'm not very familiar with soliaris so that counts that out for me.
Some of the many benefits to using Linode include:
The Linode Manager (seriously, best customer panel out there. There is none better)
Guaranteed server-grade hardware (you know exactly how many per box and the quality of the hardware in the box)
Guaranteed resources (I hate when providers try to sell you X Ghz CPU and burstable RAM on a VPS)
Telepathic support (They are answering your ticket before you put it in)
Flexibility (Multiple datacenters, tons of distros and kernels, can create your own disk images)
I've had experience with some other VPS providers. One was a one-man operation, and that was working OK up until he decided to put all the servers on a truck and move them to another datacenter. The servers got damaged in transit. This might not have been that painful of an experience, except the provider neglected to inform his customers that any of this was going to happen. All we knew was that our server disappeared one day, and it was days before the provider responded to any inquiries about what was going on. Needless to say, as the downtime stretched into weeks, we migrated (to Linode).
We also have been at another provider. They were decent, but their prices were a tad high for the service they provided, and they used OpenVZ (never again!). So you get what you pay for, but within a reasonable range, there's still room for substantial differences; sometimes it's just a good host versus a bad host.
I don't think there are any VPS hosts out there that are up to Linode's level of service, at any price, to be honest. Amazon is their closest competitor, and they have more features in some ways, but they lack the personalized service and give you much less bang for your buck.
@Guspaz:
I don't think there are any VPS hosts out there that are up to Linode's level of service, at any price, to be honest. Amazon is their closest competitor, and they have more features in some ways, but they lack the personalized service and give you much less bang for your buck.
Amen.
I think Rackspace would like to think they are a competitor, but they're really a joke compared to Linode, and even Amazon, when it comes to price and quality hardware.
Amazon, never used their support so can't comment, but their performance is awful, Linode are 10x faster (IMHO)
In other words: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Specifications
In many (many) more words, this
Linode has great specs, great tools, great support, and respectable prices (with discounts when you pay by the year). Thinking about nothing but MHz and GBs is so 90s. These days you need more than just specs to really stand out, and Linode delivers.
@kirbysdl:
Linode has great specs, great tools, great support, and respectable prices (with discounts when you pay by the year). Thinking about nothing but MHz and GBs is so 90s. These days you need more than just specs to really stand out, and Linode delivers.
I didn't think they were still offering annual discounts. I seem to recall asking, though I can't remember how I asked (email).
@Dweeber:
@kirbysdl:Linode has great specs, great tools, great support, and respectable prices (with discounts when you pay by the year). Thinking about nothing but MHz and GBs is so 90s. These days you need more than just specs to really stand out, and Linode delivers.
I didn't think they were still offering annual discounts. I seem to recall asking, though I can't remember how I asked (email).
Says so here, though:
> Payment Term
[ ] Month to month
[ ] 12 months (10% discount)
[ ] 24 months (15% discount)
http://www.vpsperformance.com/
There may be cheaper or faster-performing VPS servers around but I trust Linode for reliability.
@Mr Nod:
FWIW I'm developing the following site on a Linode 768:
http://www.vpsperformance.com/There may be cheaper or faster-performing VPS servers around but I trust Linode for reliability.
Interesting site. Thanks for that. Hopefully over time you'll add even more VPS hosts.
@Mr Nod:
FWIW I'm developing the following site on a Linode 768:
http://www.vpsperformance.com/There may be cheaper or faster-performing VPS servers around but I trust Linode for reliability.
You should add a search tool on there so I can look at all the 4 core instances
@bandgeekndb:
I'm relatively new to the VPS world, and I'm interested to hear some opinions from people who have been on other providers. A friend pointed me to
http://www.lowendbox.com/
This is Linode's forum. It's unrealistic (and unfair to Linode) to expect people here to speak highly about another provider.
Your friend should've pointed you to lowendtalk [dot] com. Sign up there and ask away
That being said, I wasn't asking anyone to speak ill of Linode and I'm sorry if the initial post was worded in a way that conveyed that.
What I was looking for were posts just like I got, that really shows why people justify Linode's higher costs. I too am happy to pay a higher price if the feature set / service / etc. is right, and I share many of the opinions people mentioned regarding service, the control panel, etc. I just have no other experience to compare it to whereas I know others have used other VPS providers and possibly felt the pain of that mistake.
I'm always looking for the best deal which is why I asked, and I enjoyed reading the responses people posted. Thanks sleddog for the link to LowEndTalk, I might read around there a bit. I figure though, for how little I'd be saving (since I'm only on a 512), I'll stick with the provider I know and can trust. Gotta say, I love sub-5-minute response times from the service desk…at 10pm EST. I know a lot of companies where 5 minutes is unheard of for response time!