11 ms·

For me the performance of Linode isn't the greatest factor, the greatest factor (and the reason I spend ~$300/m with them when I could get the 10 servers for 1/

For me the performance of Linode isn't the greatest factor, the greatest factor (and the reason I spend ~$300/m with them when I could get the 10 servers for 1/5th the price elsewhere) is that support is second to none. I have never experienced better support than I have with Linode. If I have a problem and submit a ticket (which is rare) it's answered within a few minutes, if there's a network or hardware issue they open a ticket with me before I've even noticed. No other provider I've used has ever had that quality of service.

okor 14y ago
I've had the same experience with Linode. They have great support.
rjsamson 14y ago
I've been on Digital Ocean for around 6 months now and I have to say that their support is pretty awesome - very responsive when needed. I couldn't be happier with DO so far.
- homosaur 14y ago
  That's good to hear, I was thinking of switching to Linode which I use for work, but I think I will try buying two 512MB DO servers instead.
- namidark 14y ago
  Seconded, DO's support is as quick to respond to technical issues as linode (and they're helpful on IRC as well).
- kposehn 14y ago
  Thirded. DO is pretty fanatical about support.
- chadcf 14y ago
  Good to know. I just set up a $5 a month server with a $20 promotional coupon code. That's 4 months free, yeesh. I love linode too, but my needs are modest as all I really do is host a few small traffic sites for friends and staging sites for clients. As much as I love linode, my next year of hosting will go from $240 to $40. And with their prices if I'm happy I now have a great affordable host to recommend to clients.
  - 42tree 14y ago
    What is the $20 promotional coupon code you used? Care to share?
    - waps 14y ago
      "SSDBEAR20" without the quotes (from the serverbear.com site).
- Tehnix 14y ago
  As a new user on Digital Ocean, I gotta agree, it took them less than 2 minutes to reply to a ticket I opened (so fast that I got a reply from two supporters on the same time) on a question concerning moving my server to the Amsterdam center since it'a a bit closer to me :)
yogo 14y ago
I haven't had too much experience with using the support at Digital Ocean since they're pretty stable but I don't think it is as fast as Linode. I've had the same experience with Linode too--everything gets responded to in under 5 minutes. Digital Ocean is good to checkout though, they seem to be committed to providing good service and added Arch Linux :)
- chc 14y ago
  Well, you can see the benchmarks here. As you'd expect, Digital Ocean does better on IO-bounded tasks (because it uses SSDs) while Linode has better peak CPU performance (because it offers four cores instead of one).
davidw 14y ago
It'd be cool if one of these spammy hosting comparison sites actually did some work to do things like monitor downtime, support ticket response times, and so on and so forth. Good support counts for a lot, especially when the shit hits the fan, but resources/dollar count too, and it'd be nice to know exactly what kind of tradeoffs you're making, or if a hosting provider is simply below the curve.
- patja 14y ago
  Just curious why you think the article is "spammy"? That is a pretty pejorative term to toss around. It seems like sound testing and analysis of the things that are readily tested. He doesn't even have a link to either provider. Doesn't look like he is looking for referral $ or anything other than sharing what he learned.
  - davidw 14y ago
    > Just curious why you think the article is "spammy"? That is a pretty pejorative term to toss around. I did not say anything about the article being spammy. I said "hosting comparison companies". The article is quite obviously on someone's blog.
    - duskwuff 14y ago
      Going off on a little tangent here: Listings at hosting "comparison" sites are more or less universally based on how much of a kickback the site owner is getting from the host, and/or how good of a promotional deal they can give their visitors when they sign up for that host. Compared to these sites, this article is chock-full of data. And I don't see a referral link anywhere. :)
      - ohashi 14y ago
        Most of them are, I replied a few comments above you in this thread because my startup's goal is to fix the pay to play hosting review space. You seem to have experience dealing with it and I would love to hear your thoughts.
berlinbrown 14y ago
Great documentation and support and there a lot of others using it. +1 Linode.
- homosaur 14y ago
  A lot of people use Windows, that doesn't attest to quality.
  - codegeek 14y ago
    Depeds how you define quality. Quality as in for developers? Sure windows is not preferred. Quality as in "Lets me do my things the easiest way when I want to browse internet, watch movies and most importantly, have a GUI that even my grandma can use". Windows wins hands down.
    - optymizer 14y ago
      Sent from my Macbook.
    - homosaur 14y ago
      Unless we're talking about Windows 8, that is, in which case you're dealing with the most confusing and unusable interface in modern computing.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
    - darxius 14y ago
      Both OSX and Ubuntu easily fill your requirement.
      - niels_olson 14y ago
        After I got my retina macbook, I disabled the 3G on my Cr-48 running Ubuntu (with Unity) and let my 10 yo daughter use it. At one point, all kids got all their screens confiscated, and it sat in my dresser for a few weeks. A week or so later, she started using my old white 2008 MacBook. It's got an Intel SSD and 4GB RAM: far superior to the Cr-48, minus the 3G radio. While re-arranging the garage, I found some USB speakers and ran across the Cr-48, and set it up for some music in the garage. My daughter immediately wanted it back. She prefers Ubuntu with Unity to OS X and prefers the Cr-48 even though she agrees it isn't as snappy as the MacBook.
driverdan 14y ago
I don't have a lot of experience with DO's support, but my one request was solved in under 10 minutes. Other than shared hosts, I've had this type of support from all hosting provides I've used. If a provider took more than 15 minutes to respond to an urgent request (eg server down) I'd find a new provider.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
canttestthis 14y ago
Good support is not exclusive to Linode (_especially_ at that price range). For equally good support at cheaper prices look at BuyVM (NY/CA), Prometeus (Italy), Ramnode.com (Atlanta, if you need SSD/SSD-cached) and SecureDragon (FL). And thats just the ones I have used for my personal use.
- xur17 14y ago
  I've been using BuyVM for about a year now, and I've had several instances of downtime, including one for half a day, and one due to hardware failure where I lost my data. Also, their support wasn't all that responsive when the server was down. I'm considering switching to DigitalOcean just for the backups. Are these included in the cost?
pjungwir 14y ago
I can attest to Linode's great service: One Sunday morning I was playing around with a Chef script, which meant occasionally wiping the machine so I could re-run the script from scratch. At some point the machine wouldn't come back up. I sent in a ticket, but I figured the rest of my Sunday was shot. By the time I'd made some tea and sat back down, I had a reply that the problem was fixed!
- nanidin 14y ago
  My former houesemate works at Linode. Based on how he ran the servers in the house, this is about what I'd expect! :)
INTPenis 14y ago
I've used VPS on dreamhost and glesys for a couple of years now and I don't see when you really need support. One time I had to reset a VPS but in the end it was due to a mistake I made as root. Generally I treat VPS like any other co-location hosting operated by a 3rd party. I make sure to have redundancy and backups managed seperately. The only other situation I can imagine is site-wide issues, which you can do nothing to help with anyways so just sit back and wait for them to get their stuff together. In other words, if you know your way around the shell and your server OS, the need for support becomes very insignificant.
raylu 14y ago
I've had the opposite experience, similar to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209207 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209207. I'm using a VPS so I'm not really looking for support. On a few occasions, the machine has gone down because of some maintenance or some issue that comes up. I was not notified of this and had to submit a ticket myself, after which I was told that the techs had taken down my machine. After asking why I wasn't notified, I was given no direct response.

okor 14y ago

I've had the same experience with Linode. They have great support.

rjsamson 14y ago

I've been on Digital Ocean for around 6 months now and I have to say that their support is pretty awesome - very responsive when needed. I couldn't be happier with DO so far.

homosaur 14y ago
That's good to hear, I was thinking of switching to Linode which I use for work, but I think I will try buying two 512MB DO servers instead.
namidark 14y ago
Seconded, DO's support is as quick to respond to technical issues as linode (and they're helpful on IRC as well).
kposehn 14y ago
Thirded. DO is pretty fanatical about support.
chadcf 14y ago
Good to know. I just set up a $5 a month server with a $20 promotional coupon code. That's 4 months free, yeesh. I love linode too, but my needs are modest as all I really do is host a few small traffic sites for friends and staging sites for clients. As much as I love linode, my next year of hosting will go from $240 to $40. And with their prices if I'm happy I now have a great affordable host to recommend to clients.
- 42tree 14y ago
  What is the $20 promotional coupon code you used? Care to share?
  - waps 14y ago
    "SSDBEAR20" without the quotes (from the serverbear.com site).
Tehnix 14y ago
As a new user on Digital Ocean, I gotta agree, it took them less than 2 minutes to reply to a ticket I opened (so fast that I got a reply from two supporters on the same time) on a question concerning moving my server to the Amsterdam center since it'a a bit closer to me :)

yogo 14y ago

I haven't had too much experience with using the support at Digital Ocean since they're pretty stable but I don't think it is as fast as Linode. I've had the same experience with Linode too--everything gets responded to in under 5 minutes. Digital Ocean is good to checkout though, they seem to be committed to providing good service and added Arch Linux :)

chc 14y ago
Well, you can see the benchmarks here. As you'd expect, Digital Ocean does better on IO-bounded tasks (because it uses SSDs) while Linode has better peak CPU performance (because it offers four cores instead of one).

davidw 14y ago

It'd be cool if one of these spammy hosting comparison sites actually did some work to do things like monitor downtime, support ticket response times, and so on and so forth. Good support counts for a lot, especially when the shit hits the fan, but resources/dollar count too, and it'd be nice to know exactly what kind of tradeoffs you're making, or if a hosting provider is simply below the curve.

patja 14y ago
Just curious why you think the article is "spammy"? That is a pretty pejorative term to toss around. It seems like sound testing and analysis of the things that are readily tested. He doesn't even have a link to either provider. Doesn't look like he is looking for referral $ or anything other than sharing what he learned.
- davidw 14y ago
  > Just curious why you think the article is "spammy"? That is a pretty pejorative term to toss around. I did not say anything about the article being spammy. I said "hosting comparison companies". The article is quite obviously on someone's blog.
  - duskwuff 14y ago
    Going off on a little tangent here: Listings at hosting "comparison" sites are more or less universally based on how much of a kickback the site owner is getting from the host, and/or how good of a promotional deal they can give their visitors when they sign up for that host. Compared to these sites, this article is chock-full of data. And I don't see a referral link anywhere. :)
    - ohashi 14y ago
      Most of them are, I replied a few comments above you in this thread because my startup's goal is to fix the pay to play hosting review space. You seem to have experience dealing with it and I would love to hear your thoughts.

berlinbrown 14y ago

Great documentation and support and there a lot of others using it. +1 Linode.

homosaur 14y ago
A lot of people use Windows, that doesn't attest to quality.
- codegeek 14y ago
  Depeds how you define quality. Quality as in for developers? Sure windows is not preferred. Quality as in "Lets me do my things the easiest way when I want to browse internet, watch movies and most importantly, have a GUI that even my grandma can use". Windows wins hands down.
  - optymizer 14y ago
    Sent from my Macbook.
  - homosaur 14y ago
    Unless we're talking about Windows 8, that is, in which case you're dealing with the most confusing and unusable interface in modern computing.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - darxius 14y ago
    Both OSX and Ubuntu easily fill your requirement.
    - niels_olson 14y ago
      After I got my retina macbook, I disabled the 3G on my Cr-48 running Ubuntu (with Unity) and let my 10 yo daughter use it. At one point, all kids got all their screens confiscated, and it sat in my dresser for a few weeks. A week or so later, she started using my old white 2008 MacBook. It's got an Intel SSD and 4GB RAM: far superior to the Cr-48, minus the 3G radio. While re-arranging the garage, I found some USB speakers and ran across the Cr-48, and set it up for some music in the garage. My daughter immediately wanted it back. She prefers Ubuntu with Unity to OS X and prefers the Cr-48 even though she agrees it isn't as snappy as the MacBook.

driverdan 14y ago

I don't have a lot of experience with DO's support, but my one request was solved in under 10 minutes. Other than shared hosts, I've had this type of support from all hosting provides I've used. If a provider took more than 15 minutes to respond to an urgent request (eg server down) I'd find a new provider.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

canttestthis 14y ago

Good support is not exclusive to Linode (_especially_ at that price range). For equally good support at cheaper prices look at BuyVM (NY/CA), Prometeus (Italy), Ramnode.com (Atlanta, if you need SSD/SSD-cached) and SecureDragon (FL). And thats just the ones I have used for my personal use.

xur17 14y ago
I've been using BuyVM for about a year now, and I've had several instances of downtime, including one for half a day, and one due to hardware failure where I lost my data. Also, their support wasn't all that responsive when the server was down. I'm considering switching to DigitalOcean just for the backups. Are these included in the cost?

pjungwir 14y ago

I can attest to Linode's great service: One Sunday morning I was playing around with a Chef script, which meant occasionally wiping the machine so I could re-run the script from scratch. At some point the machine wouldn't come back up. I sent in a ticket, but I figured the rest of my Sunday was shot. By the time I'd made some tea and sat back down, I had a reply that the problem was fixed!

nanidin 14y ago
My former houesemate works at Linode. Based on how he ran the servers in the house, this is about what I'd expect! :)

INTPenis 14y ago

I've used VPS on dreamhost and glesys for a couple of years now and I don't see when you really need support. One time I had to reset a VPS but in the end it was due to a mistake I made as root. Generally I treat VPS like any other co-location hosting operated by a 3rd party. I make sure to have redundancy and backups managed seperately. The only other situation I can imagine is site-wide issues, which you can do nothing to help with anyways so just sit back and wait for them to get their stuff together. In other words, if you know your way around the shell and your server OS, the need for support becomes very insignificant.

raylu 14y ago

I've had the opposite experience, similar to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209207 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209207. I'm using a VPS so I'm not really looking for support. On a few occasions, the machine has gone down because of some maintenance or some issue that comes up. I was not notified of this and had to submit a ticket myself, after which I was told that the techs had taken down my machine. After asking why I wasn't notified, I was given no direct response.