Looking for a Linode Alternative? See Our Top 3

Published on September 14, 2022 by Kevin Graham

Linode is a cloud hosting company that is particularly well-liked by developers .

It has great cloud infrastructure with Linux virtual machines and bare metal machines, IaaS offerings like managed databases and object storage. It’s also pretty affordable, making it very attractive for entrepreneurs that are just starting out or ones that want to grow their businesses further.

However, no company is perfect. Linode has been seeing some faltering in the uptime of their data centers in the past, although they’ve been better in recent times.

That being said, here I compiled a list of the 3 best options if you’re looking for a Linode alternative or if you want to try out something new.

Let’s go!

UpCloud

UpCloud is a global cloud hosting company with top-notch cloud servers and 100% SLA uptime. Through their IaaS service, they offer standard functionality like managed databases and load balancers, object storage services, MaxIOPS block storage, and simple backup services.

Data Centers

UpCloud has 12 data centers around the world:

  • Europe
    • UK (London)
    • Poland (Warsaw)
    • Netherlands (Amsterdam)
    • Spain (Madrid)
    • Germany (Frankfurt)
    • two in Finland ((both in Helsinki)
  • North America
    •  US (Chicago, New York, and San Jose)
  • Asia
    • Singapore (Singapore)
    • Australia (Sydney)

Pricing

UpCloud’s pricing plans are very similar to Linode’s; there isn’t that big of a difference between them when it comes to this.

The simple plans that include a shared hosting plan start at $5 per month for 1GB memory, 1 CPU, 25GB MaxIOPS Storage, and 1TB transfer. If you use the Helsinki data center, however, the price is $7.50 per month, which is a drawback, because in Linode’s case the price doesn’t change with the data centers.

Functionality and Technical Support

Tech support and functionality are similar to Linode’s.

UpCloud offers 24/7 support for their customers through live chat that you can reach through the Control Panel. There’s also the option to send an email if there are any issues.

In any event, when you buy directly with UpCloud you receive basic server functionality and support. But if you use WP Bolt hosting, you’ll get a fully managed and supported server on any of these four providers mentioned here.

Vultr

Vultr is one of the best cloud hosting platforms out there boasting superb cloud infrastructure and a highly reliable 100% network uptime. Founded in 2014, it aims to help businesses and developers to simplify their online infrastructure endeavors through an advanced cloud hosting platform.

Vultr provides plenty of IaaS services such as public cloud, single-tenant bare metal, storage, managed databases, managed Kubernetes, cloud GPU, and a lot more.

Data Centers

Vultr has an impressive collection of 27 data centers around the world!

It offers the largest worldwide data center network which consists of:

  • North America
    • US (New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, Miami, Honolulu)
    • Canada (Toronto)
    • Mexico (Mexico City)
  • South America
    • Brazil (São Paulo)
  • Europe
    • Sweden (Stockholm)
    • The Netherlands (Amsterdam)
    • UK (London)
    • Germany (Frankfurt)
    • France (Paris)
    • Poland (Warsaw)
    • Spain (Madrid)
  • Asia
    • India (Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore)
    • Japan (Tokyo)
    • Republic of Korea (Seoul)
    • Singapore (Singapore)
  • Australia
    • Sydney
    • Melbourne

Pricing

Vultr has a very affordable pricing range, similar to Linode and UpCloud. Linode offers more bandwidth compared to Vultr with the same CPUs, same storage and memory.

There are lots of pricing plan options that Vultr offers for bare metal servers; Optimized Cloud Compute, standard Cloud Compute, managed Kubernetes engines, databases, as well as block storage and object storage.

Functionality and Technical Support

Vultr has a comprehensive support offering. There’s the FAQ section that’s supposed to help customers with billing questions and they offer 24×7 support via their ticketing system.

If you need quick answers to all kinds of questions you can check the knowledge database called Vultr Docs.

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is another great cloud hosting platform that seems to target developers, as well as startups, and small and medium-sized businesses. It’s especially known for describing its virtual private servers as “Droplets”, but they also offer a full range of IaaS such as load balancers, managed databases, object storage, and block storage.

DigitalOcean offers a selection of Unix and Linux servers and is particularly aimed toward developers through their marketing and extensive range of tutorials covering most topics on their site. It has 99.99% SLA uptime for droplets and storage.

Data Centers

Currently, DigitalOcean has 13 data centers which are located in 8 regions across the world:

  • Asia
    • India (Bangalore)
    • Singapore (Singapore)
  • Europe
    • Germany (Frankfurt)
    • Netherlands (two in Amsterdam)
    • UK (London)
  • North America
    • Canada (Toronto)
    • US (three in New York, three in San Fransisco)

Pricing

DigitalOcean’s pricing tends to be about 20% higher than the pricing everyone has come to know and expect from other cloud infrastructure providers that we mentioned here – UpCloud, Vultr, and Linode, which are all pretty much the same price.

Functionality and Technical Support

DigitalOcean’s support is a bit less comprehensive than the one offered by the other companies mentioned here, but it’s still good. They offer a knowledge base comprising support articles, product documentation, community, and the DigitalOcean Marketplace.

And if all else fails, you can always open a ticket with their 24×7 team of system administrators.

Conclusion

As you can see, these four companies offer similar services for similar prices. It depends on what kind of line of work you’re in and what you need from the service providers.

Vultr is good if you want a quality affordable solution, while DigitalOcean should be used more by developers. UpCloud is a good, reliable overall solution. And you can always go back to Linode if you don’t like these companies.

It’s worth noting again that by buying directly through any of the four hosting providers you’re receiving basic server functionality and support. If, however, you sign up for WP Bolt, you’ll get a fully managed and supported server regardless of which of these four providers you choose.

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