5 ms·

There are plenty of VPS providers out there who are cheaper than Linode, including some with compelling SSD packages. With Linode, I know that I am getting exc

There are plenty of VPS providers out there who are cheaper than Linode, including some with compelling SSD packages. With Linode, I know that I am getting excellent support. There's the peace of mind of knowing that when I submit a ticket, someone will read and respond in short order. A $5 SSD VPS sounds great, but I automatically wonder what kind of hardware I will be on (does it compete with Linode's RAID 10 configuration?), and how long my support requests will take to be addressed, and whether or not the low prices are a sustainable business model.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
I agree with everything you say, but if history has taught us anything it is that people want "cheap" and just expect great support regardless of price. I mean the best example is airlines. For the longest time the big national airlines claimed that they would laugh last since their support/customer care was /so/ much better than cheap no-thrills airlines. But look at what happened! The no-thrills airlines have been stealing market share year upon year, people are booking whatever is cheapest in the price comparison all other things be damned. The same is true of retail Vs. the internet. Retails shops claimed that they wouldn't lose market share because people loved the one on one customer service and face to face interaction, but clearly they were mistaken. In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest.
- LeonidasXIV 14y ago
  > In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest. Not sure about the US, but when buying electronics Amazon is usually somewhere in the middle, price-wise. They are almost never really the cheapest and if so, this is usually due to a Amazon Marketplace seller, not Amazon themselves.
  - nanidin 14y ago
    When I had Amazon Prime, the free shipping + lack of sales tax made almost always made Amazon the best choice, financially.
    - LeonidasXIV 14y ago
      Lack of sales tax is US-specific, too which is, for me, quite strange. Amazon here pays 19% sales tax just like every other online and offline business and they end up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum (using price-comparison websites).
- phillmv 14y ago
  Well, the main difference that comes to mind is that in the airline business, the denominator in your "cost function" is probably going to be keeping $30-100 million dollar planes in the air all the time. Whereas in low-end VPS services, the labour cost for Great, Responsive Service will quickly begin to approach your capital outlay. Amazon on the other hand, doesnt make any money - http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/29/amazon_q4_profits_fall_45_percent.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/29/amazon_q4_pro...
  - josh2600 14y ago
    Amazon makes a ton of money. They don't make profit because Amazon's horizon is 100 years from now. They are trying to slowly drive all other retails into starvation by forcing them to operate at unreasonable margins (margins amazon is only able to break even at because of scale). Talking about amazon as if they're a charity is not apt. Amazon makes a great deal of money and judiciously reinvests it.
    - phillmv 14y ago
      They're a publicly traded company. However you want to characterize their strategy – and I think everyone agrees with your summary of their strategy – as a shareholder I'm not interested in 100 year time horizons because I will be dead by then. The argument goes, no other company gets such a free pass from their shareholders. Amazon could be amazingly profitable right now; in real terms, shareholders are subsidizing their current strategy in ways that Apple or Microsoft or Walmart could never get away with.
      - ios84dev 14y ago
        So why are you a shareholder? Or why haven't you attempted to change the policies from long term thinking to quarterly thinking like most companies these days?
    - lsc 14y ago
      >They are trying to slowly drive all other retails into starvation by forcing them to operate at unreasonable margins (margins amazon is only able to break even at because of scale). This is not true in the hosting arena, at least. Amazon is like everyone else in this industry; when they came out, they came out with very compelling prices. Well, costs fall with moores law. Amazon prices (especially bandwidth prices) have not. There are... a lot of new entrants to the market, and they /all/ have prices that are dramatically cheaper than amazon.com. hell, most of them make me look overpriced, and it wasn't so long ago that I was the unreasonably cheap option.
sudonim 14y ago
"With Linode, I know that I am getting excellent support." To be honest, the poor support was one of the reasons we moved away from Linode. We were in the Newark datacenter for about 8 months with 12 linode boxes. Had frequent issues with their load balancer and most of the time when we told them there was a problem, they asked us to prove it. A few times we had extended outages due to "unscheduled maintenance" Prior to running my business on Linode I had a single VPS with them for 2 years for personal stuff. I had zero problems... so YMMV. Overall, I'd still use them again, but not for mission critical stuff after that experience.
- brandon272 14y ago
  My experiences with Linode have been excellent as far as support is concerned. That's just anecdotal and YMMV. With that said, would you trust a $5/mo. VPS provider like DigitalOcean with "mission critical stuff"?
  - okor 14y ago
    That is the question. They are the new kids on the block. I plan on moving some less critical projects to DigitalOcean. I'll be monitoring uptime very closely.
    - clone1018 14y ago
      We've been around for a year and hope to be around longer, if you notice any problems just let us know.
  - sudonim 14y ago
    I'm actually experimenting with DigitalOcean for a side-project, but we've moved our main site on to dedicated hardware so no plans to try DigitalOcean for that.
  - tszming 14y ago
    I am also one of the happy linode customers for more 3 years, but I also think we shouldn't judge by using the price tag only - constructive competition is always good for us. I still remember the old days when I switched from slicehost to linode, 30% (360MB vs 256MB instance) cheaper and later 50% (512MB vs 256MB)..
agopaul 14y ago
"but I automatically wonder what kind of hardware I will be on" that is actually a good point. Is the underling hardware server grade? You can easily achieve good performance on some common desktop hardware (or some cheap home-built server) and some SSDs, but obviously, no one would host nothing more than a personal blog on it
joelhaasnoot 14y ago
lowendbox.com - best VPS deals. Companies are shady sometimes, mostly dedicated boxes that are divied up. Some good providers - buyvm.net has a proud following and are very stable, others not so much.
- xur17 14y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call buyvm "stable". I experienced a hardware failure while I was with them that resulted in multiple days of downtime (with poor communication - I had to go into their IRC chat and ask to figure out what was going on. They didn't reply to my support ticket). More recently, their network has been the target of DDOS attacks, etc. I'm guessing this is partly due to their clientele. Also, all of their Las Vegas servers went down earlier today. The lack of backup options are making me consider switching to DigitalOcean. We'll see if their reliability lives up to the hype.
bitcartel 14y ago
How long will the prices stay low? $5 is low-end, not mid-tier. "Investors are really looking for a couple of things... At DigitalOcean, we were able to differentiate ourselves by focusing on the mid-tier market, and catering to the needs of individual developers that were being completely ignored by the larger cloud hosting providers." http://www.forbes.com/sites/danreich/2012/09/19/startup-ceo-ben-uretsky-on-launching-digital-ocean-raising-money-and-joining-techstars/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/danreich/2012/09/19/startup-ceo-...
- homosaur 14y ago
  They claim forever if you read the comments on the article. It seems likely if they're limiting CPU access.
  - lsc 14y ago
    You raise prices, in this industry, by not lowering them as hardware/bandwidth prices fall, so it's pretty reasonable to think that prices are not going up.
andmarios 14y ago
For a $5 vps you don't have to wonder, just try it out for a couple of months if you have time and incentive (like many Linodes). I think it would more fair though to compare a $20 Linode with a $20 offer from another provider.
corford 14y ago
If it helps, I moved a mail server that's been running on a 2GB Linode vm for the last two years over to a 4GB DO vm and so far (~4 weeks in) it's been problem free (in the Amsterdam DC).

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

I agree with everything you say, but if history has taught us anything it is that people want "cheap" and just expect great support regardless of price. I mean the best example is airlines. For the longest time the big national airlines claimed that they would laugh last since their support/customer care was /so/ much better than cheap no-thrills airlines. But look at what happened! The no-thrills airlines have been stealing market share year upon year, people are booking whatever is cheapest in the price comparison all other things be damned. The same is true of retail Vs. the internet. Retails shops claimed that they wouldn't lose market share because people loved the one on one customer service and face to face interaction, but clearly they were mistaken. In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest.

LeonidasXIV 14y ago
> In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest. Not sure about the US, but when buying electronics Amazon is usually somewhere in the middle, price-wise. They are almost never really the cheapest and if so, this is usually due to a Amazon Marketplace seller, not Amazon themselves.
- nanidin 14y ago
  When I had Amazon Prime, the free shipping + lack of sales tax made almost always made Amazon the best choice, financially.
  - LeonidasXIV 14y ago
    Lack of sales tax is US-specific, too which is, for me, quite strange. Amazon here pays 19% sales tax just like every other online and offline business and they end up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum (using price-comparison websites).
phillmv 14y ago
Well, the main difference that comes to mind is that in the airline business, the denominator in your "cost function" is probably going to be keeping $30-100 million dollar planes in the air all the time. Whereas in low-end VPS services, the labour cost for Great, Responsive Service will quickly begin to approach your capital outlay. Amazon on the other hand, doesnt make any money - http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/29/amazon_q4_profits_fall_45_percent.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/29/amazon_q4_pro...
- josh2600 14y ago
  Amazon makes a ton of money. They don't make profit because Amazon's horizon is 100 years from now. They are trying to slowly drive all other retails into starvation by forcing them to operate at unreasonable margins (margins amazon is only able to break even at because of scale). Talking about amazon as if they're a charity is not apt. Amazon makes a great deal of money and judiciously reinvests it.
  - phillmv 14y ago
    They're a publicly traded company. However you want to characterize their strategy – and I think everyone agrees with your summary of their strategy – as a shareholder I'm not interested in 100 year time horizons because I will be dead by then. The argument goes, no other company gets such a free pass from their shareholders. Amazon could be amazingly profitable right now; in real terms, shareholders are subsidizing their current strategy in ways that Apple or Microsoft or Walmart could never get away with.
    - ios84dev 14y ago
      So why are you a shareholder? Or why haven't you attempted to change the policies from long term thinking to quarterly thinking like most companies these days?
  - lsc 14y ago
    >They are trying to slowly drive all other retails into starvation by forcing them to operate at unreasonable margins (margins amazon is only able to break even at because of scale). This is not true in the hosting arena, at least. Amazon is like everyone else in this industry; when they came out, they came out with very compelling prices. Well, costs fall with moores law. Amazon prices (especially bandwidth prices) have not. There are... a lot of new entrants to the market, and they /all/ have prices that are dramatically cheaper than amazon.com. hell, most of them make me look overpriced, and it wasn't so long ago that I was the unreasonably cheap option.

sudonim 14y ago

"With Linode, I know that I am getting excellent support." To be honest, the poor support was one of the reasons we moved away from Linode. We were in the Newark datacenter for about 8 months with 12 linode boxes. Had frequent issues with their load balancer and most of the time when we told them there was a problem, they asked us to prove it. A few times we had extended outages due to "unscheduled maintenance" Prior to running my business on Linode I had a single VPS with them for 2 years for personal stuff. I had zero problems... so YMMV. Overall, I'd still use them again, but not for mission critical stuff after that experience.

brandon272 14y ago
My experiences with Linode have been excellent as far as support is concerned. That's just anecdotal and YMMV. With that said, would you trust a $5/mo. VPS provider like DigitalOcean with "mission critical stuff"?
- okor 14y ago
  That is the question. They are the new kids on the block. I plan on moving some less critical projects to DigitalOcean. I'll be monitoring uptime very closely.
  - clone1018 14y ago
    We've been around for a year and hope to be around longer, if you notice any problems just let us know.
- sudonim 14y ago
  I'm actually experimenting with DigitalOcean for a side-project, but we've moved our main site on to dedicated hardware so no plans to try DigitalOcean for that.
- tszming 14y ago
  I am also one of the happy linode customers for more 3 years, but I also think we shouldn't judge by using the price tag only - constructive competition is always good for us. I still remember the old days when I switched from slicehost to linode, 30% (360MB vs 256MB instance) cheaper and later 50% (512MB vs 256MB)..

agopaul 14y ago

"but I automatically wonder what kind of hardware I will be on" that is actually a good point. Is the underling hardware server grade? You can easily achieve good performance on some common desktop hardware (or some cheap home-built server) and some SSDs, but obviously, no one would host nothing more than a personal blog on it

joelhaasnoot 14y ago

lowendbox.com - best VPS deals. Companies are shady sometimes, mostly dedicated boxes that are divied up. Some good providers - buyvm.net has a proud following and are very stable, others not so much.

xur17 14y ago
I'm not sure I'd call buyvm "stable". I experienced a hardware failure while I was with them that resulted in multiple days of downtime (with poor communication - I had to go into their IRC chat and ask to figure out what was going on. They didn't reply to my support ticket). More recently, their network has been the target of DDOS attacks, etc. I'm guessing this is partly due to their clientele. Also, all of their Las Vegas servers went down earlier today. The lack of backup options are making me consider switching to DigitalOcean. We'll see if their reliability lives up to the hype.

bitcartel 14y ago

How long will the prices stay low? $5 is low-end, not mid-tier. "Investors are really looking for a couple of things... At DigitalOcean, we were able to differentiate ourselves by focusing on the mid-tier market, and catering to the needs of individual developers that were being completely ignored by the larger cloud hosting providers." http://www.forbes.com/sites/danreich/2012/09/19/startup-ceo-ben-uretsky-on-launching-digital-ocean-raising-money-and-joining-techstars/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/danreich/2012/09/19/startup-ceo-...

homosaur 14y ago
They claim forever if you read the comments on the article. It seems likely if they're limiting CPU access.
- lsc 14y ago
  You raise prices, in this industry, by not lowering them as hardware/bandwidth prices fall, so it's pretty reasonable to think that prices are not going up.

andmarios 14y ago

For a $5 vps you don't have to wonder, just try it out for a couple of months if you have time and incentive (like many Linodes). I think it would more fair though to compare a $20 Linode with a $20 offer from another provider.

corford 14y ago

If it helps, I moved a mail server that's been running on a 2GB Linode vm for the last two years over to a 4GB DO vm and so far (~4 weeks in) it's been problem free (in the Amsterdam DC).