Linode Reviews

We're a hosting service, as well as a software development and website design company. We use Linode for virtual servers to host the websites that we design and maintain.

The relatively small but well-focused set of services is adequate for our use. We install our own software and run our own servers, so they're providing the base system for us.

It is important that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers. We don't utilize overseas currently, but that's definitely a plus in the event that we have a client that needs a local server overseas.

Implementing Linode has helped us to accelerate innovation. We moved from having servers in a colo where they were our servers and we maintain the hardware, to virtual servers with Linode five years ago. The ability to move between servers in the event that there's some hardware issue, and the ability to rely on them to maintain their hardware, was a real plus. It took a load off of us having to be concerned about the hardware the systems are running on. Plus, the connection that they provide is high bandwidth and has considerably more than we were being offered by the previous provider.

What we find most valuable about Linode is its service. The fact that you can get a person on the phone has just been fantastic. I've gotten to where I just won't use a company that doesn't provide somebody on the phone. There are some issues, especially when you're dealing with something as timely as an issue with a server, where communicating in any other fashion is just not adequate. You need to get somebody on the phone when you have a down issue, and they're very good. You don't necessarily always get the person that knows the most about the issue when you first call in, but they're pretty good about getting it to somebody who can help you.

It would be wonderful to have the person that is most familiar with an issue when you call up available on the phone immediately, but I understand that can't always be the case. There are too many different kinds of issues and you need a hierarchy for people to handle concerns.

I've had some difficulties with some of their IP addresses being banned by certain mail servers. I think it's based on the size of their network that they manage and the fact that they have different users within C-blocks of IPs that might be spam sources affecting anybody else that's on that same network. It's a difficult problem to address, but it does affect us occasionally, and having your email rejected is not something any of us like dealing with.

Typically, we try to reach out to the party that is blocking the IP address. On occasion, it takes contacting Linode and having them also reach out and request that the IP be unblocked. So far, that's been adequate.

I have been working with Linode for nine years.

Linode provides the servers for all of our clients, and the stability and availability are extremely good. I think in the five years that I've been with them, there was just one issue where there was a DoS attack. It's been quite some time but from what I recall, it took at most an hour to resolve the problem.

The rest of the time, there have been a few occasions where somebody on the same virtual host as us has been overusing the CPU and we've needed to move the virtual host to another physical server, and that's always been handled promptly. Most of the time, it has been really good.

Resizing Linodes is easy to do. I've not hit the boundaries of the capabilities of their system or even come close to it. There is plenty of bandwidth, plenty of CPU, plenty of memory available, and plenty of disk space. I've had no problems.

Nobody in the company really works with Linode on a regular basis.  Most management tasks can be handled online.   There's probably over the past five years been 10 or 15 occasions where somebody needed to do something over the phone.

There have been two of us that have dealt with Linode, including myself and a programmer that I have working for me. At this point, we don't have a plan to increase our usage.

The company has been operating for more than 20 years and prior to Linode, we did not use a similar product. Rather, we were using a colo facility with our own hardware.

The initial setup is extremely easy to manage. It doesn't require anything complicated. It's all online through their interface. You add Linode, delete Linode, pick where you want the Linode to reside, size it, or resize it. It's quite easy.

You can add Linode in a couple of minutes.

Our network layout hasn't changed in years. It's a setup that we've had in place over time and it's not like we're strategizing changes to it all the time.

The pricing model is simple. They don't make things complicated, which is important. We've had to deal with Oracle's crazy pricing, which is based on how many CPUs you're running.

When we consider everything including support, response time, uptime, and price, it makes all the difference to me that you can call and get somebody on the phone, pretty much immediately. Dealing in chat and email is just not adequate when you have an issue.

Using Linode has saved us some money compared to other cloud providers, although it is not our primary concern. Availability of support is much more important than pricing.

We looked at other solutions including, for example, Amazon, as well as other virtual server providers. We had some feedback from some of the people we reached out to in making the decision that had provided some good feedback on Linode, so we thought we'd give that a try.

We set up a couple of servers, then I moved some sites over and had a good experience with them. So, we migrated the whole setup.

One of the significant differences between Linode and the other products is the support. We also found their pricing quite competitive, which is another reason that we opted for Linode.

My advice for anybody who is looking for this type of service is to seriously consider Linode.

In summary, this is a good service and something that we benefit from every day. Really, in my experience, they've done a fantastic job and there really hasn't been anybody dropping the ball over there.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The Linode servers we have are all running Ubuntu.

We have several client websites, including several with active eCommerce options, that act as large document management systems for academic journals.

For our own use, we have a major business wiki, which we use for project planning, ISO900 compliance, and contact management, etc.

For all the sites, we also run email services, which are so simple to set up that we don't charge our clients extra to use as many as they like. We offer a webmail system with calendars, address books, etc.

Putting everything onto Linode has streamlined what we do, but with minimal risk, as we have a "clone" virtual server ready for action. We have developed scripts that make the monitoring and maintenance of the Linode virtual machines very easy, with statistics and other reports regularly emailed to a support desk throughout the day. Often, we know of any issues before the clients have noticed.

We don't make use of Linode's own backup, as we have overnight jobs that use SFTP to download essential data to a RAID array on our local network. However, we also use the Linode servers themselves as off-site storage for data generated on our local machines.

The most valuable features are the simple scalability and ease of starting a new virtual machine. Before we kept a backup, we did damage to an existing installation. We created a new machine and had the basic services back up within a short time. Now, we keep a powered-down server as a hot backup, although this does mean that we occasionally have to power it up for updates. We are looking at means of simplifying this task.

The procedures to upgrade between Linux versions are reasonably simple, but those could be a result of using Ubuntu rather than being specific to Linode.

The support service and knowledge articles supplied by Linode are very comprehensive but inevitably there are situations where a user, particularly is a "newbie" is left on his or her own.

The only improvement in this aspect of the service which I can think of is perhaps a pool of developers who could be hired for those cases where the need goes beyond the support offered. Offering this as a service would enhance the product.

All of our servers have been configured and upgraded by our own staff, which has been a good training exercise, although at times on very tight schedules when a little guidance would have helped. I do realize this is beyond the normal remit of support, which is why I am suggesting a separate pool. Perhaps Linode could approve third-party providers and take a commission of the work provided?

We have been using Linode for more than seven years.

We did use another solution prior to this, but the provider was forced to close down. It was a small organisation and didn't have the proper resources to upgrade all of its equipment when needed. The effort of maintaining a mixed server room proved too much. In fact they recommended that I moved to Linode after they announced they eventual termination of their service. 

All of it is very easy to install.

We have an in-house team for deployment and maintenance. They are responsible for the configuration and upgrades.

Pricing is very good and flexible, according to the resources required.

We did evaluate other products, however, at this remove, I cannot remember the alternatives that we looked at.

I am using Linode for our cloud platform to host our enterprise solutions.

Service availability is the most valuable feature. It gives every user 100 percent uptime.

It is like in a single store for cloud solutions, which is important for us.

Right now, they don't have multiple data centers. They have limited data centers. I am currently using the Singapore and Mumbai data centers, but I am looking for data centers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. They need to improve the availability of their data centers and partnership engagements with cloud Panda solution providers, like us.

I have been using it for five years.

It does not require maintenance.

It takes two to three minutes to upgrade my plans or downgrade my services.

Right now, three of us are working on this server to manage things. However, our user base is around two million.

I sent two or three tickets for support, but I have gotten the appropriate resolutions. I would rate the support as a nine out of 10. They could improve the response time compared to AWS. 

We used AWS before Linode. 

Right now, we have four to five accounts. We are also closing our subscriptions with AWS, GCP, and Azure to save costs.

The initial setup is straightforward. In less than 30 minutes, I can set up my server and VM.

You save on your private or public cloud costs when using Linode.

Compared to other service providers, like AWS and Google, the cost of services are much less and more affordable. We are saving about 90 percent by going with Linode versus other cloud providers.

We didn't require any knowledge to host our enterprise applications on Linode. If you want to go with AWS, you need to learn their ecosystem first.

I also tried DigitalOcean. Linode is better than DigitalOcean. Linode is better in terms of creating and updating VMs. 

Even though they don't have many data centers across the globe, the speed has been good. With the help of the CDN, the speed has been good. It has a good user interface. Also, the community documentation is good.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.

We are using Linode for hosting a website.

Linode has given us free upgrades as far as memory and storage space, so that helped us to be able to expand without any extra cost. Also, their support and stability have made us feel reliable.

The most valuable feature is the domain settings page.

The documentation is good.

I like the overall simplicity of their interfaces and their website. Everything worked as I expected and it's easier than I thought to get started with.

The stability and customer support have been very reliable.

The suitability of this solution depends on the features that you need. If you're an Uber-sized company then you're probably not going to want to start using Linode. If you are a large-sized organization then you're going to want to start using one of the bigger providers that gives you the scalability and the feature set that you are probably going to be needing in the future.

I have been using Linode for approximately 14 years.

They made it easy to upgrade the server to migrate to a bigger one very easily. Basically, there was no work on my end. I just had to choose a server to upgrade, then they automatically did it. That aspect was really good.

It is only me that works with the product. I have one server for the website and then I have another server for the database. At this point, I don't plan to increase my usage.

With respect to features, I see Linode as a better provider for smaller companies. I don't know how scalable they are compared to AWS, or whether they can scale with a faster-growing company.

The support has always had a pretty fast turnaround, they have good security, and they are very descriptive in their documentation for the resolution of solutions or problems.

Support has exceeded my expectations versus AWS.

I have also used AWS and I feel like if I had a problem, I don't have to worry about waiting for a response. This is unlike the case where I need help from AWS. With Linode, they have more personal support.

I have also worked with Google and Microsoft Azure. The large providers have a lot more features, compared to Linode. Linode is good if you just have a smaller setup or just need a few servers, but if you need to do something like offline storage, then AWS and Google have a lot of special features that not everybody needs. I see Linode as a solution for smaller companies.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I recall reading the documentation on how to secure a server and getting set up was straightforward. They had really good documentation for that, so it was fairly easy to use. The deployment took about an hour.

The value for the price is really good.

The pricing model is simple compared to AWS, as you know how much you've got to pay every month.

My impression is that I save money compared to what I would pay for other cloud providers, although there is no way for me to approximate a dollar value. I pay the same amount each month and I don't have to worry about getting a surge of traffic and having to pay extra for it.

My advice for anybody who is considering this service is to do their research, as it depends on what you need. They offer Linux in a way that's similar to DigitalOcean. Linode is one of those companies that's fairly easy to get started with, but if you have a bigger company or you're going to grow faster, you might need to consider a bigger provider. It just depends on your needs.

In summary, this is a very good product but nobody's perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are hosting Linux virtual machines and load balancers over there. This is the infrastructure we have over there. Apart from that, we are using a firewall from the Linode side. These are the three Linode components that we are using.

We have not explored Linode too much. We are just restricted to VMs, load balancers, and the firewall. We are currently not hosting a lot over there. We are not facing any challenges with it. We are looking into hosting some replicated storage there.

It has helped to minimize the risk and scale services at large in virtually no time. This is how the cloud supported us. Earlier, we were in our own data center. It was in-house infrastructure, but we moved over to the cloud. It allows us to scale services as the demand increases over time.

Its cost can be improved.

I have been using Linode for almost four to five years.

We never had any problem with scalability while using AWS, Azure, or Linode.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Before Linode, we used Azure. We have used AWS. Both Azure and AWS have too many offerings. They have different types of offerings in terms of PaaS, SaaS, and many other solutions, but Linode focuses more on the open-source technology side and the infrastructure as a service side. It has less capability when it comes to the PaaS and SaaS Platforms.

Overall, it is cost-effective. They offer flat, no lock-in pricing. We also get discounts.

As compared to its competitors, it is costly, but at the same time, it has many features. In terms of functionality and features, it offers more capability, but it is also costly.

With any cloud computing product, the foremost requirement is performance, and along with that, there should be cost-effectiveness. These are two major factors for us to decide whether we should have the service of a cloud service provider or not.

Go for Linode if you want to host the infrastructure as a service. It is much cheaper than AWS and Azure. For SaaS and PaaS services, you can explore AWS and Azure. For infrastructure as a service, Linode is a lot more cost-effective than AWS and Azure.

I would rate Linode a nine out of ten. It is a leader. We have used other products as well, and it has much more capability as compared to them.

In the beginning I needed something to host domain name services for the domain name that I had registered. I also use it for email and file sharing. We were pioneers in that regard, in April 2008, going fully online for the company, with everybody working from home and interacting through the platform that we set up with Linode.

Linode's services accelerated our company's innovation, in a way. It facilitated this transition where, right now, everybody is working from home. But in April 2008, very few companies were doing so. We were able to do so because of their services and because they made it so easy to configure and set up.

Linode has saved us money compared to what we would pay other cloud providers, absolutely. It's hard to tell how much we have saved because we've only evaluated the others, we haven't really full-scale used them. At some point our own service was co-located with a provider, which was a different model, but that certainly was far more expensive, three to four times more expensive.

The most valuable and important thing is that it is a hosting platform where I can configure and deploy virtual machines on-the-fly. 

It is also important that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers. The ability to deploy on multiple servers, worldwide, allows us to have distributed services and failover and redundancy. We added some features to our platform that leveraged that and helped us do it in a distributed manner.

It would be helpful if they provided the additional Linux distributions that I prefer using. But there is still a workaround. I can do it without direct support. It's a bit more complicated, but it can still be done.

I opened an account with them in April 2008.

I haven't used it for the whole of those 13 years. There have been some interruptions for a while when I haven't needed the service. But I have used it pretty much throughout that period.

So far the stability has been very good. We have never had unplanned downtime.

There has been planned downtime, but that was announced well in advance, whenever they had to roll out patches to hardware and software. We were notified a month, or sometimes even more than a month, in advance. So we were fine in preparing 

And whenever they have had a failure, they seem to have a very good predictive failure system that notifies them. So even then, they gave us two or three days' notice about the need to restart environments. It's been good.

For what we need the scalability is fine. The platform gives us all the computing power required. When we scale our solution up, we have features in our own solution that help us leverage multiple distributed environments and multiple machines. So we do not need support from the provider for this. It's not like we need any kind of clustering solution from outside our company. We do that kind of thing ourselves.

We are happy with what they provide, but others probably would need more in terms of scalability.

All our employees, about 30 people, are working from home, so everybody is connecting to this platform. We are building enterprise-level software for supply chain planning for other companies. It's not only our own employees who connect to do their regular day-to-day jobs, but we also deploy an environment for our customers, which they connect to and run data integration on. With our customer users, there are about another 50 users.

We plan to increase usage of Linode, absolutely. As we grow, as we get more customers of our own, we will configure and deploy more environments to serve them.

Their 24/7/365, no-tiered, human customer support is very important, although we very rarely use it. But it's important to know that there's somebody there, in extreme cases, that we can reach and talk to.

Their support is 100 percent very good. Whenever we needed their support they were there for us and they provided everything we needed. When it comes to the flexibility and overall responsiveness of Linode, compared to the other major cloud providers I have worked with, they're great. I don't know how big Linode is, but they certainly are a big company, yet they still give you the impression of a mom-and-pop shop, where you have direct personal service. You're not interacting with a big corporation with a technical support center somewhere overseas. The interaction gives a very personal feeling and it's great.

I was looking for a very simple solution provider. I'm not looking for a complex solution added on top of that. That's why I use Linode instead of Amazon Web Services or Google. Being a technical person myself, it's easier to get the basic thing and to configure it the way I want, as opposed to a less sophisticated person who would want all the additional services on top to help them navigate through things.

The initial setup is very clear and straightforward. I've been using Amazon Web Services too, because I was interacting with another company and they had set up with Amazon Web Services. Comparing them, I find Linode more straightforward and to the point. With Amazon it was very hard to figure out everything you need.

To set up an environment using Linode, the part that has to be done using the Linode tools, takes less than an hour. Of course, there's the actual configuration of the environment in addition, but that would have to happen on any platform. But having the environment positioned and ready to go doesn't take long at all.

Recently, I've been looking at Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services, and we have also used Azure, and I'm still far more happy with Linode than any of those. Surprisingly, Azure has been better than Google and Amazon, but not that much.

One key difference is that pricing is very hard to come by and to understand with all the bigger companies. Their pricing models are so weird and it's hard to figure out exactly how much I am going to pay for this kind of service. Everything is piecemeal. With Linode, it's simple and straightforward. You know exactly what you will have to pay at the end of the day.

Everybody's needs are different, but if you have the level of technical knowledge, and if you're looking for a simple, straightforward solution, where you are able to configure and customize it to the way you want it, Linode is the ideal platform. They provide you with the support in that regard. If you don't have the technical capabilities in-house and you need more support from the provider to deploy more elaborate solutions, then maybe others would be a better fit. But as long as you have the in-house technical capabilities, Linode is a better fit, in my opinion.

It does what we want it to do. Over the years they have grown and implemented many features. There isn't anything in particular that I would request from them. The services have always been very effective and quick.

Its user-friendly interface and convenient administrator panel allow me to quickly and easily manage my services.

Linode offers cost-effective pricing, and it enables me to swiftly deploy my services. Its simplicity makes it a more straightforward choice compared to AWS, which can be more complex and costly.

There is room for improvement regarding customer support.

I have been working with it for two years.

It offers good stability capabilities.

It is a scalable solution.

I am not satisfied with their customer support services. They should improve the effectiveness of it by enhancing the response time.

The initial setup was easy and quick.

Over the past two years, I installed a total of seven machine instances on Linode. It has been easy to manage them.

It is quite affordable, which makes it a great choice.

It is superior to other services offered in Taiwan. It can operate swiftly and allows us to back up and restore the system conveniently. Right now, we are facing VM interruption, so I would rate it eight out of ten.

I used to work as a software engineer for many years and when I retired, I wanted to carry on writing software. I wanted to work on my own vanity projects, rather than anything commercial. My particular interest and hobby is traditional music, so I wanted to develop tools, such as browser applications, websites, and so forth to help people learn and to promulgate traditional music. I needed a server for that, so I decided to use Linode.

I am using a cloud platform that is running Linux.

My main benefit is that I did not want to maintain my own server. Rather, I wanted to rent server space. In particular, I didn't want to do any of the administrative tasks because it's really boring and I'd have to take care of things like upgrading the physical hardware. It's been eight years now, and I just don't want to do that.

Linode is running virtual machines on relatively high-performance racks and because they actually are upgrading their racks quite regularly, all that's done for me. It's wonderful.

I very much like the support that you get, and I think that it's excellent.

I like that the virtual servers are kept up-to-date and they apply security patches immediately. They're very forthcoming when they need to tell you that there's going to be some downtime.

The fact that they offer a small set of computing services is very important for me because I don't want anything extended. I only require basic Linux facilities, and nothing else.

Having worldwide coverage is quite important because they've got their American datacenter, but they also have a good datacenter in London. This is the one that I use because it's more local, and I prefer to have a local server than to have to use an American one. It's well resourced, and they have a lot of computing power there. Also, I've had no problems with it.

It would be helpful if they offered a service where they handle the Linux security. Securing your own server is very difficult when you think of denial of service attacks, man in the middle attacks, and other such threats. They have documented it really well, and the documentation is very good, but I struggle to maintain a really secure server because I just don't have the expertise. If there were help available that could be provided, I would definitely pay for it.

I have been using Linode for between eight and nine years.

I've had my service continually up for eight years with only very tiny outages, which they have warned me about because of upgrades. The upgrades are done very quickly, so I would say that I've had 99.999% availability in eight years.

Scalability is not an issue for me because I've got a very tiny application with a very small number of users. As far as I understand, scalability is very good, but I don't really need it.

At this point, I don't plan to extend my reach. I've got enough capacity and processing power in this server to do everything that I want to do.

Whenever I've contacted support, I've always been connected with somebody in America and I've always had a very good response from them. I'm not sure how they are set up, but it seems that they're always available. I have only needed to contact them a few times.

The initial setup is very straightforward, apart from the security, which I find very difficult.

It takes me quite a long time to spin up an environment because I'm not using Kubernetes or Docker or any of these kinds of tools. I do everything very slowly, manually using FTP. It took me about a month to set it up to the point where I was happy with it. This is not a criticism of Linode. Rather, just because I'm operating as one person on my own, I don't have the infrastructure to do this sort of thing with a pre-packaged solution. Instead, I have to do it the hard way.

As a managed solution, they provide the documentation, good IT support, and upgrade the kernel when it needs to be done.

ROI is not applicable because it's entirely a vanity project and I'm not being paid for it. It's just for the little community that I am involved with.

I like the level of resources that you get for the price that you pay and feel that it's good value for the money. I pay just over £20 per month and have done so ever since I started eight years ago, which to me is good value.

The pricing model is very simple for what I want, and I've never actually looked at their pricing model in any depth. As far as my own limited view is concerned, it's very simple.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing Linode. I looked around to see what solutions the people I respect were using, and I copied them.

Other than the issue with setting up my own Linux security, everything has been straightforward. What I'm contemplating doing, and the one thing that I will have to do at some stage is upgrading my version of Linux. I'm still running a very old version of Linux Ubuntu, as I had it installed when it was Ubuntu 14.

It is now Ubuntu 20, and I just don't want to go through the set of steps required to upgrade it. What I might do instead is rent another server, which is pre-installed with Ubuntu 20, and just reinstall what I need. It would be quicker for me to do that, as opposed to the laborious upgrade.

My advice for anybody who is considering Linode is that if you want to have a cloud solution, based just on the raw Linux platform, with nothing more and nothing less, then this is ideal. It is really simple and bare-bones, straightforward, very well documented, and very easy to use.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.