Linode Review Based On My Experience
I decided to try Linode’s SSD Cloud Hosting after having tried Digital Ocean their direct competitor. Both companies offer SSD Cloud Server Hosting at incredibly affordable prices. Today I’ll be reviewing Linode having used them for the past 6 months and counting. I have 4 cloud servers setup at Linode and have been testing their performance and speed. So let’s take a look at the results!
Linode SSD VPS v.s Traditional VPS
So before Linode came in to the market if you needed more performance than a standard shared hosting plan you would need to consider a VPS. A typical VPS would run you $30 and up and required quite a bit of technical knowledge. You would need to install an operating system and then compile whatever modules you wanted to use such as apache, php and mysql to name a few. The VPS would not be using SSD drives but standard SATA hard drives. It was a big performance improvement from shared hosting but required a big leap in terms of cost and technical knowledge. You would also need to wait hours for a hosting company to provision and configure your server and for people who needed to do quick testing there was no option. For example if you’re a developer and want to test your software you can’t just order a VPS and then cancel it in a few days or hours. You’re locked in to a minimum monthly contract.
With Linode the VPS market has changed drastically. For starters you can pay hourly. That is a massive advantage over the competition. Let’s say you want to test an app or script, you can deploy a cloud server in 60 seconds with the operating system of your choice. Run your tests and then shutdown the server. You’ll only be billed for the hours you used making it isanely affordable for test environments.
Linodes uses SSD drives in their Cloud VPS servers which increases performance and speed over a traditional VPS. They have a 40Gbit network which was shockingly fast and is pretty much unheard of for a hosting company. As I write this there are 250,000 customers using Linode.
Linode Pricing
Linode offers four base plans and they also have larger plans if you require more CPU and memory. The cheapest Linode you can deploy is $10 a month which is almost as cheap as shared hosting! The $10 Linode comes with 1Gb RAM, 1 CPU core, 24GB of SSD disk space and 2TB of transfer. This is more than enough for most websites and it gives you so much more flexibility. Below is a screenshot of Linodes four plans as of April 3rd 2015:
Benefits of SSD Cloud Hosting at Linode
Right off the bat you can signup for Linode and deploy your first server within minutes. You choose the operating system you want and can even use what they call StackScripts. With Linodes StackScripts library you can automate the process of loading an operating system or script on your server. As an example they have a LAMP script so you can simply execute the script and it will install Linux with apache, MySQL and PHP. No command line skills required. They even have a WordPress StackScript so if you plan to use WordPress you can use the script and it will automate the install of everything you need to run WordPress. The library of automation scripts is quite large and they are always adding scripts to make life easier for their users. The StackScripts is also community driven so you can use a script created by other Linode users.
Simplicity and Ease of Use
The one thing I love about Linode is how easy it is to use. The entire process of deploying a cloud server is point and click. First choose the plan you want, then choose the Linux distribution and lastly choose the location of your server. That’s it, hit deploy and within a few minutes your server will be online and ready.
Linode Manager Control Panel
The Linode Manager is their user-friendly control panel. It’s a web based interface that literally lets you control every aspect of your Linode server. You can see an overview of your servers performance charts in detail. Navigation is simple and clean with the most important content in the forefront and then on the right side you can see some quick information about your server. You can see your server specs, location and even the top processes running on your server. It’s laid out cleanly and easy on the eyes.
Server Location Location Location!
Unlike most VPS companies Linode lets you choose the geographical location of your server. Currently they allow you to deploy your cloud VPS in 6 different countries on 3 continents.
Asia pacific: Tokyo (Singapore is coming soon)
North America: U.S East, U.S West, U.S Central and U.S South
Europe: London (Frankfurt coming soon)
I currently have my Linode servers in Tokyo, U.S East and West and London. Just to give you an idea I also have a SSD Cloud Server with DigitalOcean in Singapore and the performance is not that great. Having the option to choose your servers location let’s you deploy your website or application easily in a remote destination
Direct Console Access
When your server crashes you need console access to see what is happening. Linode offers out-of-band console access so you can troubleshoot your server when you can’t access it directly. They call this ‘Lish’ which is basically a virtual console. This allows you to access your server even if the network is inaccessible. With most VPS hosts you would need to contact them for troubleshooting and this just drives me nuts.
Linode VPS Scalability
Another one of my favorite features of Linode is scaling. With a few clicks you can resize your disk and resources. Nothing complicated and all done through the Linode Manager. This gives you the flexibility to expand your server without having to do anything fancy. Need more disk space? A few clicks and you’re done. True real time scaling is what developers need and Linode is bang on.
Cloning your server with Linode
Cloning your server is a pretty cool feature and I’ve tested it once. I cloned one Linode and within a few minutes I had a second server with the exact same config. This lets me backup my server or do further testing in a development environment. You can even clone a server to create your own high-availability cluster. You might not need to clone a server but having the option with a couple clicks is handy.
Overall Linode Review
Having used various VPS hosting companies I can truly say that Linode does things differently. The various options of deployment and locations alone puts them ahead of the competition. You control what goes on your server, where your server is in the world and grow your server as your website or business grows. With a 40Gbit backbone network you’ll get insanely fast network speeds. While their Singapore and Frankfurt locations are not yet available I will be launching VPS’s in those two locations when they are available to do further testing.
So who is Linode for? Well honestly it started out as a platform for developers to test their software but has grown to a much broader audience. From developers to designers,cloud hosting is here to stay and gives you true flexibility. The whole idea behind Linodes cloud hosting is to provide a quick and easy way to deploy a server so you can focus on your business. Having to compile PHP or other modules is a pain. Linode is affordable whether you pay hourly or start with their $10/month cloud VPS you’ll be online within minutes.
If you’re looking for SSD Hosting or Cloud VPS hosting Try Linode and see for yourself.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Linode so leave a comment with your experience!
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