I have two use cases. I work mostly by developing e-commerce sites for companies and the first use case is to develop the infrastructure, the hosting solution for those e-commerce platforms. This is done mostly in Magento, WordPress, Drupal, and other open-source platforms.
We also have our own solution, which we host in Linode. It is a software as a service platform that connects Mercado Libre with Zendesk, which are two separate companies, and we join them through middleware.
Linode offers a relatively small but well-focused set of cloud services, which is important to us because while they only offer the basics, they do it very clearly and very easily. They have simple pricing, good support, and good guides to help you. Most small companies like ours don't use most of the features that other cloud computing providers offer, so having a simpler set of features makes it easier for us to handle.
Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers, although it is not very important for our use case because we work mostly in Latin America. There is not much coverage here, so we use the USA data centers. We don't have any customers in other parts of the world, such as in Africa, Asia, or Europe, so coverage elsewhere is not really important.
Having a reliable partner like Linode has helped us to rapidly grow our infrastructure, and they were able to focus when we have had any kind of problem.
This product has absolutely helped us to accelerate innovation, for example, when we had to migrate the architecture of our SaaS solution. It was really easy to deploy new hosts and make the necessary changes to our infrastructure so that they could communicate between themselves and the outside. Whenever we had a problem, we were able to contact Linode and they helped us. For example, there were some technical specifications that we were missing. We also used the guides that they provided to secure the servers and to communicate with them. I believe it was done quite quickly, in fact, because of the help that they provide.
The simplicity by which you can handle your inventory is one of the things I like the most. You can easily create new hosts, destroy existing hosts, or do migrations.
I like the statistics that they provide, such as usage.
They have a good solution for accessing the servers if you accidentally get locked out.
The support they provide if you have any type of problem is great.
It would be nice if they had more data centers in Latin America.
Although not for our use case, I believe others would benefit from having support in other languages. For example, in this region, there are people who speak Spanish and Portuguese. This is the same for the guides, where having translated versions would be helpful.
I have been using Linode for approximately six years.
We use Linode on a daily basis, or at least very often.
The stability is quite good, although it's not perfect. We have had perhaps two problems in the six years that we have been using it. In these cases, the whole data center was down for a short time. I don't remember how long, but it was perhaps an hour or two. For us, its stability is acceptable.
For our very small company, it's completely elastic. I don't expect that we have much growth ahead but I think it will be completely flexible. At this point, I have tested having more than a few servers at a time.
At this time, it's only me who is working with Linode.
The fact that Linode offers 24/7/365 no-tiered, human support is very important to us because our services run 24/7, and like most technology, problems can arise at any time. If you have the type of problem where you believe that there's something wrong with an upper level of the infrastructure, it would be very difficult if you couldn't access support on their end, for example during a weekend or at night. For situations where you have a critical event going on, 24/7 assistance is obviously very important.
I have used other cloud platforms in the past, although I have never contacted support for them. The services that I have used are GoDaddy, DigitalOcean, LatinCloud (previously known as EL Server), and Amazon a few times.
I switched to Linode for simplicity and pricing. Also, I believe in open-source software, which is what I primarily use, and I believe that Linode is aligned with that vision, as well.
Now that I have been using it, I am very happy and don't see any reason to change.
I believe that Linode has saved us money compared to other cloud providers, but I haven't studied the figures to see how much this might be.
The initial setup is straightforward. It was just a few clicks to get started.
The first time we had to create an account, we filled out a form and put in our information. It included our name, email address, password, and so forth. Then, to deploy Linode takes another two or three clicks. It couldn't be easier.
Of course, then you have to configure it, but the actual deployment is as easy as it gets and it takes only a couple of minutes to complete. For configuration, the length of time it takes depends on what it is that you want to do. However, for a basic setup, it might take 15 minutes. You can also save templates for cases where you want to use the same type of configuration. Often, you can configure very quickly with no time for configuration, because the saved configuration can be deployed.
There is support for deployment using the API, although we have never done it that way. I expect that using the API would only mean that it takes a few seconds to deploy.
We have seen ROI because this is a cost for us, and compared to other solutions, it minimizes the cost and generates a positive income.
The pricing model is simple and that's important to us because, for example, Amazon is really complex and you have to spend a lot of time to understand how much you are going to spend on a certain solution. It's great for us to be able to simply add a few numbers and know how much we expect to spend.
There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees to include things like extra public IPs and backup services. I believe that additional public IPs cost $1 each. As I recall, everything is documented on their pricing page and there are no hidden fees.
My advice for anybody who is considering Linode is to try it out. It worked for us and I think it would work very well for any users that do have the technical knowledge to take care of the system administration. If you're technical and looking for a stable solution then you should try it because it's easy to use. They do offer a managed solution as well, although it's not as easy as utilizing a web hosting company.
The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Linode is the importance when it comes to thinking about all of the points of failure. In particular, which ones you control and which ones you don't, and whether you have to rely on a partner, like them. We did experience downtime on a couple of occasions and it was really bad for us, so pay specific attention to that and be aware of the risks.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
