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Is it really well known? I've only ever heard of Linode because they sponsored some Youtube videos. I've never heard it mentioned in a professional setting as a

Is it really well known? I've only ever heard of Linode because they sponsored some Youtube videos. I've never heard it mentioned in a professional setting as a developer. On the contrary, Akamai is incredibly well known.

jay-barronville 4y ago
I can’t tell you why you haven’t heard of Linode much, but yes, the Linode brand absolutely is well known. When I think Linode, I think developer, small consultancy, etc. When I think Akamai, I think enterprise. Completely different brands. It just seems like such a bizarre business decision to me for Akamai to throw a strong brand like that away just because they want to slap their name on the product instead. All in all, I’m pretty sure this will turn out to have been a mistake.
- echelon 4y ago
  They're not the only ones. I consider myself up to date, and I had no idea Linode was in the VPS business. If I had to guess their mission, it sounds like Tailscale. [1] I've used Digital Ocean and all the big cloud providers. Vercel, Netlify, Heroku. Haven't touched Akamai, but I certainly know of it. [1] https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/ https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/
  - super256 4y ago
    Linode is better comparable to Vultr, UpCloud and DO, rather than the serverless stuff at Netlify and Vercel. :)
  - johnnylambada 4y ago
    Linode has been around forever and were once one of the few games in town. They were into cloud computing years even AWS was. A lot of, er, elder statesman developers remember them from way back then. So if you’ve gotten into the game less than 15 years ago, it makes sense that you may not have heard of them.
  - tomxor 4y ago
    Linode was around before all of those. They were there at the beginning of "cloud".
  - dnsco 4y ago
    Linode predaates Vercel, Netlify, & Heroku by several years. Heroku's original value prop was essentially "You don't have to set up a Linode for your rails app anymore, now you can just $git push heroku".
  - jay-barronville 4y ago
    I was running websites for clients on Linode like 10 years ago. I have to check, but I’m almost certain DigitalOcean didn’t even exist back then. Linode has been in the game for a very long time. Edit: I just checked. DigitalOcean launched their beta product in 2012. I think it took another couple years before developers started to really take them seriously.
  - guluarte 4y ago
    linode was a very kown hosting provider some time ago, along with hostgator, dreamhost, etc, when everyone was using cPanel and php lol
  - smaudet 4y ago
    You are probably too young to remember the php Cpanel hosts then. Linode was one of the big names in being cheap and having an actual vps where you could do whatever. Short of actually buying a rack and the accompanying hardware/networking software (not renting and having your electric/network subsidized) having a vps is the cheapest slickest option to do whatever, part of why I have never bothered with any of the Iaas options. At least AWS blows hard-core in comparison, a lot of the alternatives focus on optimizing some use case, not doing whatever the hell you want. I'm not sure how you would even compare tailscale, that's focused more on connecting all your boxes e.g. on linode...
  - adql 4y ago
    > If I had to guess their mission, it sounds like Tailscale. [1] Linode Li Node Linux Node
  - ayewo 4y ago
    Linode, Slicehost, MediaTemple and a few others I'm forgetting belong to a declining generation of hosting businesses that used to be popular in their hey days.
    - ayewo 4y ago
      I just remembered Engine Yard. Like the others, Engine Yard is another notable one from that era that is still around (but their focus then was on RoR, IIRC). https://www.engineyard.com/ https://www.engineyard.com/
- thrashh 4y ago
  Linode was maybe well known 5-10 years ago but I haven’t heard that name spoken in a long time Linode hasn’t put themselves out there like other companies. For example, Digital Ocean has all those tutorials that show up in results. Vercel is linked to a hit framework (Next.js). Heroku was a darling linked to Ruby’s community and rode a wave of popularity. Linode just has… existed for people specifically looking for virtual machines. That’s not a lot of people, relatively
  - nickstinemates 4y ago
    Yeah once DigitalOcean launched it made Linode feel more folksy, to me at least. I swapped basically immediately and have been a customer since.
  - jolmg 4y ago
    > Linode just has… existed for people specifically looking for virtual machines. I feel they have been improving little by little throughout the years. I don't remember the exact times when each change happened, but I remember when they introduced hourly pricing, also their $5/month VPS, more variety in the VPSes they offer (GPU-specialized options, high-mem specialized options, etc.), the update of their web interface, etc. I imagine there probably must've also been improvements in their APIs for launching servers, etc. since hourly pricing must've made that useful for automated scaling.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    It may be different for other sectors but it seemed like they sponsored every episode of Changelog podcast for quite some time. At the very least they must have sponsored every episode I listened to.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > When I think Linode, I think developer, small consultancy, etc. When I think Akamai, I think enterprise. Yes, they're clearly trying to sell cloud services into their enterprise customers. Because small developers/consultancies have small pockets, and enterprises have large ones. It makes perfect sense as business strategy. But it requires understanding that you don't matter to them (you are not the main character of Akamai's story/strategy). Although it does mean I'll probably need to consider moving clouds myself finally after a decade, because the writing has to pretty much be on the wall at this point that they're not going to want me as a customer...
  - bastardoperator 4y ago
    It doesn't make any sense from this vantage point. Akamai thinks they can sell me Linode at enterprise prices? LOL, that's not happening.
    - corobo 4y ago
      No, Akamai wants to sell enterprise users at enterprise prices. They would prefer you stop using them if it's anything less. If anyone has tried to use Akamai for anything without an impressive budget behind them I imagine they can confirm this theory.
      - bastardoperator 4y ago
        CDN is just a fancy name for web hosting and you can use Akamai through Azure CDN anytime you want. I worked on the Edgecast/Verizon CDN, it's just DNS and web servers all the way down but with more expensive buzzwords.
  - friendzis 4y ago
    > Because small developers/consultancies have small pockets, and enterprises have large ones. Enterprises love long term contracts. Cloud is all about highly-dynamic PAYG. Who does not love long term bulk contracts at [roughly] the price of dynamic PAYG?
  - 4y ago
- haimez 4y ago
  My guess is equity holders in Linode fully expect Akamai to destroy the brand, and that’s fine because they’re cashing out today.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- acdha 4y ago
  I certainly have heard about Linode but all historically — probably a decade since that was mentioned as something someone was switching _to_. I think Akamai is looking at the future and figuring that any substantial growth is going to come from directions where their CDN reputation carries more weight.
0xDEF 4y ago
Akamai still has an Oracle/IBM-like reputation. One of the companies that for many years didn't have a sign up page. Instead they wanted anyone who is interested to call their sales people.
jolmg 4y ago
Interesting. Their acquisition of Linode last year is the first time I ever heard of Akamai. I've known of Linode for more than 10 years.
- mjhagen 4y ago
  I learned the name "Akamai" when I saw it in the URL for the ~~first~~ second trailer for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in 1998. edit: it was actually the second trailer in '99
radium3d 4y ago
I have been using a Linode VPS for years. I never talk about it because it always just works. Perhaps that's why? I had never heard of Akamai before they took over Linode. There are bubbles around the world we've never entered. I do hope they continue to upgrade my server for free very couple years just like Linode has always done. If they don't, then we know Linode's true innovation is dead and I may move on.
- jolmg 4y ago
  > I never talk about it because it always just works. Perhaps that's why? They've been very reliable for me, too. I can't say anything bad about them.
jb1991 4y ago
For me, it’s the opposite. Strangely, I’ve never heard of Akamai until this post, but I’ve known about Linode for years.
- selcuka 4y ago
  You should either be an executive, or over 40 to have heard of Akamai. They were all the rave in the beginning of 2000s, but these days they don't need advertisement anymore.
  - jb1991 4y ago
    > You should either be an executive, or over 40 to have heard of Akamai. Well, this premise doesn't apply to me, but there are a lot of people in the world, and we are not all the same. From looking at the other comments here, appears I'm not the only one who is new to Akamai.
mort96 4y ago
It sounds like they have invested heavily into ads to make the Linode brand well known, and as a result, you know about it.

jay-barronville 4y ago

I can’t tell you why you haven’t heard of Linode much, but yes, the Linode brand absolutely is well known. When I think Linode, I think developer, small consultancy, etc. When I think Akamai, I think enterprise. Completely different brands. It just seems like such a bizarre business decision to me for Akamai to throw a strong brand like that away just because they want to slap their name on the product instead. All in all, I’m pretty sure this will turn out to have been a mistake.

echelon 4y ago
They're not the only ones. I consider myself up to date, and I had no idea Linode was in the VPS business. If I had to guess their mission, it sounds like Tailscale. [1] I've used Digital Ocean and all the big cloud providers. Vercel, Netlify, Heroku. Haven't touched Akamai, but I certainly know of it. [1] https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/ https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/
- super256 4y ago
  Linode is better comparable to Vultr, UpCloud and DO, rather than the serverless stuff at Netlify and Vercel. :)
- johnnylambada 4y ago
  Linode has been around forever and were once one of the few games in town. They were into cloud computing years even AWS was. A lot of, er, elder statesman developers remember them from way back then. So if you’ve gotten into the game less than 15 years ago, it makes sense that you may not have heard of them.
- tomxor 4y ago
  Linode was around before all of those. They were there at the beginning of "cloud".
- dnsco 4y ago
  Linode predaates Vercel, Netlify, & Heroku by several years. Heroku's original value prop was essentially "You don't have to set up a Linode for your rails app anymore, now you can just $git push heroku".
- jay-barronville 4y ago
  I was running websites for clients on Linode like 10 years ago. I have to check, but I’m almost certain DigitalOcean didn’t even exist back then. Linode has been in the game for a very long time. Edit: I just checked. DigitalOcean launched their beta product in 2012. I think it took another couple years before developers started to really take them seriously.
- guluarte 4y ago
  linode was a very kown hosting provider some time ago, along with hostgator, dreamhost, etc, when everyone was using cPanel and php lol
- smaudet 4y ago
  You are probably too young to remember the php Cpanel hosts then. Linode was one of the big names in being cheap and having an actual vps where you could do whatever. Short of actually buying a rack and the accompanying hardware/networking software (not renting and having your electric/network subsidized) having a vps is the cheapest slickest option to do whatever, part of why I have never bothered with any of the Iaas options. At least AWS blows hard-core in comparison, a lot of the alternatives focus on optimizing some use case, not doing whatever the hell you want. I'm not sure how you would even compare tailscale, that's focused more on connecting all your boxes e.g. on linode...
- adql 4y ago
  > If I had to guess their mission, it sounds like Tailscale. [1] Linode Li Node Linux Node
- ayewo 4y ago
  Linode, Slicehost, MediaTemple and a few others I'm forgetting belong to a declining generation of hosting businesses that used to be popular in their hey days.
  - ayewo 4y ago
    I just remembered Engine Yard. Like the others, Engine Yard is another notable one from that era that is still around (but their focus then was on RoR, IIRC). https://www.engineyard.com/ https://www.engineyard.com/
thrashh 4y ago
Linode was maybe well known 5-10 years ago but I haven’t heard that name spoken in a long time Linode hasn’t put themselves out there like other companies. For example, Digital Ocean has all those tutorials that show up in results. Vercel is linked to a hit framework (Next.js). Heroku was a darling linked to Ruby’s community and rode a wave of popularity. Linode just has… existed for people specifically looking for virtual machines. That’s not a lot of people, relatively
- nickstinemates 4y ago
  Yeah once DigitalOcean launched it made Linode feel more folksy, to me at least. I swapped basically immediately and have been a customer since.
- jolmg 4y ago
  > Linode just has… existed for people specifically looking for virtual machines. I feel they have been improving little by little throughout the years. I don't remember the exact times when each change happened, but I remember when they introduced hourly pricing, also their $5/month VPS, more variety in the VPSes they offer (GPU-specialized options, high-mem specialized options, etc.), the update of their web interface, etc. I imagine there probably must've also been improvements in their APIs for launching servers, etc. since hourly pricing must've made that useful for automated scaling.
- aliqot 4y ago
  It may be different for other sectors but it seemed like they sponsored every episode of Changelog podcast for quite some time. At the very least they must have sponsored every episode I listened to.
lamontcg 4y ago
> When I think Linode, I think developer, small consultancy, etc. When I think Akamai, I think enterprise. Yes, they're clearly trying to sell cloud services into their enterprise customers. Because small developers/consultancies have small pockets, and enterprises have large ones. It makes perfect sense as business strategy. But it requires understanding that you don't matter to them (you are not the main character of Akamai's story/strategy). Although it does mean I'll probably need to consider moving clouds myself finally after a decade, because the writing has to pretty much be on the wall at this point that they're not going to want me as a customer...
- bastardoperator 4y ago
  It doesn't make any sense from this vantage point. Akamai thinks they can sell me Linode at enterprise prices? LOL, that's not happening.
  - corobo 4y ago
    No, Akamai wants to sell enterprise users at enterprise prices. They would prefer you stop using them if it's anything less. If anyone has tried to use Akamai for anything without an impressive budget behind them I imagine they can confirm this theory.
    - bastardoperator 4y ago
      CDN is just a fancy name for web hosting and you can use Akamai through Azure CDN anytime you want. I worked on the Edgecast/Verizon CDN, it's just DNS and web servers all the way down but with more expensive buzzwords.
- friendzis 4y ago
  > Because small developers/consultancies have small pockets, and enterprises have large ones. Enterprises love long term contracts. Cloud is all about highly-dynamic PAYG. Who does not love long term bulk contracts at [roughly] the price of dynamic PAYG?
- 4y ago
haimez 4y ago
My guess is equity holders in Linode fully expect Akamai to destroy the brand, and that’s fine because they’re cashing out today.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
acdha 4y ago
I certainly have heard about Linode but all historically — probably a decade since that was mentioned as something someone was switching _to_. I think Akamai is looking at the future and figuring that any substantial growth is going to come from directions where their CDN reputation carries more weight.

0xDEF 4y ago

Akamai still has an Oracle/IBM-like reputation. One of the companies that for many years didn't have a sign up page. Instead they wanted anyone who is interested to call their sales people.

jolmg 4y ago

Interesting. Their acquisition of Linode last year is the first time I ever heard of Akamai. I've known of Linode for more than 10 years.

mjhagen 4y ago
I learned the name "Akamai" when I saw it in the URL for the ~~first~~ second trailer for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in 1998. edit: it was actually the second trailer in '99

radium3d 4y ago

I have been using a Linode VPS for years. I never talk about it because it always just works. Perhaps that's why? I had never heard of Akamai before they took over Linode. There are bubbles around the world we've never entered. I do hope they continue to upgrade my server for free very couple years just like Linode has always done. If they don't, then we know Linode's true innovation is dead and I may move on.

jolmg 4y ago
> I never talk about it because it always just works. Perhaps that's why? They've been very reliable for me, too. I can't say anything bad about them.

jb1991 4y ago

For me, it’s the opposite. Strangely, I’ve never heard of Akamai until this post, but I’ve known about Linode for years.

selcuka 4y ago
You should either be an executive, or over 40 to have heard of Akamai. They were all the rave in the beginning of 2000s, but these days they don't need advertisement anymore.
- jb1991 4y ago
  > You should either be an executive, or over 40 to have heard of Akamai. Well, this premise doesn't apply to me, but there are a lot of people in the world, and we are not all the same. From looking at the other comments here, appears I'm not the only one who is new to Akamai.

mort96 4y ago

It sounds like they have invested heavily into ads to make the Linode brand well known, and as a result, you know about it.