Linode Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Linode Overview

Linode is the #3 ranked solution in our list of top Infrastructure as a Service Clouds. It is most often compared to Google Firebase: Linode vs Google Firebase

What is Linode?

Simplify your cloud infrastructure with our Linux virtual machines and robust set of tools to develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier.

Linode believes that in order to accelerate innovation in the cloud, virtual computing must be more accessible, affordable, and simple. Our infrastructure-as-a-service platform is deployed across 11 global markets from our data centers around the world and is supported by our Next Generation Network, advanced APIs, comprehensive services, and vast library of educational resources. Linode products, services, and people enable developers and businesses to build, deploy, and scale applications more easily and cost-effectively in the cloud.

Increase storage capacity with additional Block Storage or S3-compatible Object Storage. Add instant Backups with complete independency to your stack. Ensure your applications and services are highly-available with Linode NodeBalancers. Deploy Kubernetes clusters with our fully-managed container orchestration engine.

Linode Pricing Page

CPU, transfer, storage, and RAM bundled into one simple price.

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Linode Buyer's Guide

Download the Linode Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: June 2021

Linode Customers

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Pricing Advice

What users are saying about Linode pricing:

"The monthly cost depends on your requirements."
"At this point, I'm paying more like $35 per month for a slightly bigger machine, and the backup, and the object service."
"I pay $5 per month for each of three servers, for a total of $15 per month, and I normally prepay a few months in advance."
"Being that they are small, their prices are slightly higher than the large providers like Amazon if you compare raw computing power."
"The biggest benefit of Linode is the pricing. It's the best deal in the business... Their pricing model is also very simple compared to Azure. I don't understand why Azure doesn't price things the way that Linode does."

"Pricing-wise, I find it simple in that they give you a monthly fee, but they also charge it hourly. So, if you are using the service for a small part of the month, then you are only paying for that small amount instead of a whole month, like with other providers. It is a flat monthly fee if you use the service for the entire month. It just makes things so simple. Because they are focusing on Linux, you don't have to worry about licensing costs of Windows and things like that. So, the price that they give you is the price that you need to pay each month. I just find it so simple compared to the likes of AWS and Azure. It is nice, easy, and predictable. I know exactly what I am going to be paying each month and what resources I get for that price."

"There might be something a little bit cheaper but I find it very fair and competitive, and nothing to complain about."

"The pricing model is very simple. I like the simplicity of it, starting at $5, then doubling as it goes up from there. That is a brilliant idea, and it is not complex at all. It is about as dead simple as you can imagine. So, if you want to double what you have, then you double your price, pay the money, and reboot. It is done. It's that simple. You can't beat that."

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Julio Graham

Managing Director at Olive Professional Services Ltd

Mar 30, 2021

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Helpful automation scripts, good documentation, responsive support, easy to use and manage

What is our primary use case?

Linode is a service that hosts virtual machines for you.

Pros and Cons

"The ability to fire up a virtual machine, use it, and then kill it, is quite a valuable feature for me."

"Before they changed the dashboard, I found some of the more granular options easier to find."

What other advice do I have?

Because I am such a happy customer, it is difficult to point to an area that is in need of improvement. I've not had a use case, and none of my customers have said, "Oh, we would have loved to have used Linode, but they don't do X." What they do is more than adequate for what I need. In my view, you'd have to go a long way to find something. I don't use the API, although I've seen a lot of documentation on it. I'm guessing that the API is an area where people would want different accessibilities, but I don't know enough about that to be able to comment. They changed the dashboard quite a while…

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Allister MacLeod

DevOps Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Mar 29, 2021

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Straightforward to set up, helpful support, and the Object Storage is useful for system backups

What is our primary use case?

I have a single 4GB model Linode and I use it as a personal server. I originally set it up to act as an email server, just for my own personal vanity domain. I don't use it for that anymore, but it's proved to be useful for many other things. Right now, I run a Minecraft server on it and I also use it for a little bit of software development. I also use it as a jump host, if I need a stable place to SSH from my laptop to get to other online resources. It means that I only have a single point that I go through to get to the other stuff that I need.

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature is the static IP address, which has been very helpful for being able to log into the same address over the course of more than a decade."

"I would like to see more seamless integration with backup, although it's pretty easy to do."

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Linode is the oldest lesson, which is just that a virtual cloud server has the availability and the flexibility that I couldn't get from physical at the time, or even now, for that matter. It's a key component in having something that's useful, having a machine that you can log into and do things on, in a consistent way, regardless of where I am or even what machine I'm connecting to it from. My key advice for anybody who is looking into Linode would be just to dive right in. Pick it up and play around with it and if you find that it's not for…

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Jacques Gelinas

Vice President Technologies at Croesus

Apr 8, 2021

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Cost-effective, well managed, reliable, and helpful support

What is our primary use case?

I have my own social media system called bolixo.org, and I am hosting it using Linode.

Pros and Cons

"They have a very nice web interface to allow you to manage and reorganize your server."

"I don't know how all of their services work, but my understanding is that they're not offering the entry-level machine for someone who just wants to own their own web page."

What other advice do I have?

I recommend Linode for any company that wants to host a web server or other similar things. Linode provides a lot of services that I don't use. For example, they provide backup functionality, load-balancing, monitoring, and other features that I do myself. In this regard, I am not a heavy user of their service. That said, I consider myself a very serious Linode user, but I'm using their product very lightly. I'm glad that they do offer more services because as I grow, I may want to use them. For example, when it comes to something as simple as a backup, it can be a nightmare. I was an IT…

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Marcus Ealing

Founder /CEO at Entropy Studios

Mar 29, 2021

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Flexible and responsive customer service, stable, and reasonably priced

What is our primary use case?

Initially, my use case was to have a server platform running that wasn't tied to the company that I worked for at the time. I wanted a solution where I could access our product and services from a platform that had no relation to our own. I was performing testing, as if coming from the outside as a customer of ours, having no network conductivity on our servers or anything like that. That was the first use case. We realized that it was pretty handy to have a cloud platform that didn't reside in our network, so what happened next, when we moved our data center from Dallas to Florida, we… more »

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature is that they are flexible and easy to get ahold of if I need something."

"Because they are a smaller company, they do not have, for example, all of the ways for authentication that Amazon or Azure has."

What other advice do I have?

Linode offers a smaller, but well-focused set of cloud computing services to customers, which I think is important because they are able to provide a very high level of support. If they did everything, if they were much larger, maybe they couldn't maintain that level of support because it wouldn't work if all of their customers asked for special treatment. My advice for anybody who is considering Linode is to start very small and become a customer of theirs, just so you get used to and familiar with the way that you deploy servers and services. I suggest this because of the fact that they are…

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Dalton Pearson

Software Systems Engineer at HMB Development

May 11, 2021

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Linode Kubernetes Engine gives me better visibility than with Azure, and UI is more user-friendly

What is our primary use case?

I was using it primarily for virtual private servers. But recently they came out with the Kubernetes platform and most of what I do at my day job is Kubernetes engineering. I'm very familiar with it. I had wanted to switch all my personal projects over to Kubernetes, and it was really great when Linode finally came out with it. Now I'm using Linode for Kubernetes clusters. I still do hold some VPSs, but most of my stuff is on Kubernetes now. I don't use Linode at my day job. We use Azure for the same thing there, but I choose to use Linode for all my personal projects.

Pros and Cons

"When it comes to the Linode Kubernetes Engine and the amount of automation it provides, it's awesome, it's a game-changer. If a process randomly dies, it could take me a while to notice that it has died, if I haven't set up monitoring. With Kubernetes, it will just restart itself using Heartbeats."

"One thing that I'd really like to see is auto-scaling node pools for their Kubernetes. I don't think that they have that. That's a huge one and would be very helpful. Specifically, what I would like is auto-scaling node pools that would scale down to zero nodes, which is tricky. That's very important for certain use cases."

What other advice do I have?

My advice to others who are considering using Linode would depend on what industry or what field they're in. I'm primarily a systems engineer and I end up being a cross between DevOps and a regular backend engineer. For anyone who is on that career path, it's invaluable to do a project and learn to use the tools before you're in the actual industry. It gives you a huge head start. Linode is definitely the best way to go about it because it teaches you the fundamentals and it's a lot more intuitive than the other providers. It will help you out when learning it. From there, when you start at a…

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Andy Heathershaw

Software Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

May 2, 2021

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Offers everything in one place: domains, servers, and object storage

What is our primary use case?

I run a small company as well as my own personal website. I am using their cloud servers for managing websites and the web applications that I develop applications. So, I use Linode both for development and hosting public applications on my website. I also use their object storage to store things, like backups and files, which I want to keep for safekeeping, but not on my personal laptops.

Pros and Cons

"The fact that you can do any Linux distribution is great. You can try out any Linux distribution, even some of the more obscure ones, and they are always keeping them up-to-date. As soon as a new distribution comes out, it is on the platform pretty much the same day, which I find really helpful."

"They are already working on the firewalls and VLANs, which need improvement, and are now in beta. I am on the beta program for the firewalls, but I can't use it yet because they are only in Mumbai and Australia, and I am not in those data centres. This is the one thing that I have been waiting for almost since the day that I joined them, so it is nice that they are doing that. The VLANs will be an improvement as well, and I am keen and waiting for that."

What other advice do I have?

Quite simply, go for it. I don't think you will be disappointed. Linode offers everything in one go. The support team is on-hand, even if you are not a paying customer yet. If you are just on a free trial or the inclusive credit that Linode offers, you will still get exactly the same support as if you were a paying customer. It is definitely important that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centres. I am not taking full advantage of that at the moment. However, I plan to as my business gets bigger, putting service closer to customers wherever they are in the world. It is…

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reviewer1531539

Managing Director & Lead Software Developer at BASX Software Development

Apr 4, 2021

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Responsive support, scales with our requirements, and the DNS management tool is helpful

What is our primary use case?

The primary use cases involve renting virtual private servers for our infrastructure, which is used for the development of software, website databases, websites, and some infrastructure such as for audio and video conferencing. The main purpose for using their virtual private servers is for our in-house development program. We use a Linux environment for our website database applications.

Pros and Cons

"The virtual machine configuration tool is very helpful for setting up a new server or for modifying an existing server."

"They recently changed the web interface and although the older one did not look as good, the new one is less responsive."

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Linode is the importance of stepping up production-ready infrastructure. My advice for anybody who is implementing Linode is to start with a small server, work with it, and then scale up later. This works well because scaling up is really easy. If you plan on very large infrastructure, conduct a PoC first. In the case where you are just hosting websites, you can start with the resources for 100 or 200 users, and then scale up as the demand increases or the size of your company or user base increases. In summary, this is a product that meets all…

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reviewer1497927

Security, Programming, Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Feb 17, 2021

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Because of the way that their pricing model is set up, I can scale up or down the size of a customer's server very easily

What is our primary use case?

I am generally using them for bringing up websites and servers for customers. Oftentimes, a company will want their own mail server and/or web server, and I will use Linode for that. It is extremely convenient and easy for me to do this. I really like how they are set up. They just seem to do everything right.

Pros and Cons

"Because of the way that their pricing model is set up, I can scale up or down the size of a customer's server very easily. It makes life very easy for me when they run out of space, need more speed or RAM, etc. I can very easily pay the difference and reboot the machine, and now I have the upgrade that I wanted. That just makes it extremely simple."

"They could have more international servers. There are certain places throughout Europe and Eastern Europe which are very open to doing a lot of technology business, such as Romania. Romania is very open to technology. At other service providers, I have stuff in Romania. I think there are some Eastern European locations that would be more open to it. So, if they could have more European points of presence, that would be more helpful."

What other advice do I have?

Go for it. I would recommend Linode. Don't be afraid to try out the cheaper, smaller systems for whatever you are running. Pick the system that meets your system requirements as best as possible, but you really can save. I would recommend it because you can save a lot of money as well as time and hassle. I would rather pay just a little bit more and have a hassle-free operation than to pay less and be faced with support issues. I don't like having to deal with support. I don't like having to bring in anybody else to help me debug something. So, I look at Linode as everything just works. It is…

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