DigitalOcean vs Google Compute Engine vs Linode

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DigitalOcean

17.8K
12.9K
+ 1
2.6K
Google Compute Engine

12.1K
9K
+ 1
423
Linode

789
619
+ 1
422
Decisions about DigitalOcean, Google Compute Engine, and Linode

Albeit restricted to only a few places worlwide compared to its peers in the cloud segment, I am yet to find another provider capable of delivering a score over 5000 (Geekbench) in a benchmark on a single CPU machine, and each machine costs $6 a month. For homelab and experienced users who don't need DBaaS or IaaC's, it's a pretty straightforward choice. A more comprehensive review of Vultr's HF machines can be found here.

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Chose Hetnzer over DigitalOcean and Linode because Hetzner provides much cheaper VPS with much better specs. DigitalOcean might seems like a good choice at first because of how popular it is. But in reality, if all you need is a simple VPS, you won't benefit much from the their oversubscribed datacenters which often underperform other competitors. Linode is also a good choice. They have cheaper options and performs slightly better than DigitalOcean. In the end, choosing a more affordable host helps you save money. That's important when you're running a tight ship.

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Peter Schmalfeldt
Senior Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 60.6K views

While Media Temple is more expensive than DigitalOcean, sometimes it is like comparing apples and oranges. DigitalOcean provides what is called Virtual Private Servers ( VPS ). While you seem to be on your own dedicated server, you are, in fact, sharing the same hardware with others.

If you need to be on your own dedicated server, or have other hardware requirements, you do not really have as many options with DigitalOcean. But with Media Temple, the skies the limit ( but so is potentially the cost ).

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Jerome/Zen Quah
Shared insights
on
Amazon EC2Amazon EC2DigitalOceanDigitalOcean

DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.

However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.

One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.

Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.

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Stephen Fox
Artificial Intelligence Fellow · | 2 upvotes · 185.1K views

GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.

  • In both cases, the instance much be shut down.

There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.

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Pros of DigitalOcean
Pros of Google Compute Engine
Pros of Linode
  • 560
    Great value for money
  • 364
    Simple dashboard
  • 362
    Good pricing
  • 300
    Ssds
  • 250
    Nice ui
  • 191
    Easy configuration
  • 156
    Great documentation
  • 138
    Ssh access
  • 135
    Great community
  • 24
    Ubuntu
  • 13
    Docker
  • 12
    IPv6 support
  • 10
    Private networking
  • 8
    99.99% uptime SLA
  • 7
    Simple API
  • 7
    Great tutorials
  • 6
    55 Second Provisioning
  • 5
    One Click Applications
  • 4
    Dokku
  • 4
    Node.js
  • 4
    LAMP
  • 4
    Debian
  • 4
    CoreOS
  • 3
    1Gb/sec Servers
  • 3
    Word Press
  • 3
    LEMP
  • 3
    Simple Control Panel
  • 3
    Mean
  • 3
    Ghost
  • 2
    Runs CoreOS
  • 2
    Quick and no nonsense service
  • 2
    Django
  • 2
    Good Tutorials
  • 2
    Speed
  • 2
    Ruby on Rails
  • 2
    GitLab
  • 2
    Hex Core machines with dedicated ECC Ram and RAID SSD s
  • 1
    CentOS
  • 1
    Spaces
  • 1
    KVM Virtualization
  • 1
    Amazing Hardware
  • 1
    Transfer Globally
  • 1
    Fedora
  • 1
    FreeBSD
  • 1
    Drupal
  • 1
    FreeBSD Amp
  • 1
    Magento
  • 1
    ownCloud
  • 1
    RedMine
  • 1
    My go to server provider
  • 1
    Ease and simplicity
  • 1
    Nice
  • 1
    Find it superfitting with my requirements (SSD, ssh.
  • 1
    Easy Setup
  • 1
    Cheap
  • 1
    Static IP
  • 1
    It's the easiest to get started for small projects
  • 1
    Automatic Backup
  • 1
    Great support
  • 1
    Quick and easy to set up
  • 1
    Servers on demand - literally
  • 1
    Reliability
  • 0
    Variety of services
  • 0
    Managed Kubernetes
  • 87
    Backed by google
  • 79
    Easy to scale
  • 75
    High-performance virtual machines
  • 58
    Performance
  • 52
    Fast and easy provisioning
  • 15
    Load balancing
  • 12
    Compliance and security
  • 9
    Kubernetes
  • 8
    GitHub Integration
  • 7
    Consistency
  • 3
    Good documentation
  • 3
    One Click Setup Options
  • 3
    Free $300 credit (12 months)
  • 2
    Ease of Use and GitHub support
  • 2
    Great integration and product support
  • 2
    Escort
  • 1
    Integration with mobile notification services
  • 1
    Easy Snapshot and Backup feature
  • 1
    Low cost
  • 1
    Support many OS
  • 1
    Very Reliable
  • 1
    Nice UI
  • 100
    Extremely reliable
  • 70
    Good value
  • 60
    Great customer support
  • 58
    Easy to configure
  • 37
    Great documentation
  • 24
    Servers across the world
  • 18
    Managed/hosted DNS service
  • 15
    Simple ui
  • 11
    Network and CPU usage graphs
  • 7
    IPv6 support
  • 6
    Multiple IP address support
  • 3
    Good price, good cusomter sevice
  • 3
    Ssh access
  • 2
    IP address fail over support
  • 2
    SSH root access
  • 1
    Great performance compared to EC2 or DO
  • 1
    It runs apps with speed
  • 1
    Best customizable VPS
  • 1
    Latest kernels
  • 1
    Cheapest
  • 1
    Ssds

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Cons of DigitalOcean
Cons of Google Compute Engine
Cons of Linode
  • 3
    No live support chat
  • 3
    Pricing
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 2
      No "floating IP" support

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is DigitalOcean?

    We take the complexities out of cloud hosting by offering blazing fast, on-demand SSD cloud servers, straightforward pricing, a simple API, and an easy-to-use control panel.

    What is Google Compute Engine?

    Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.

    What is Linode?

    Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

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    What companies use DigitalOcean?
    What companies use Google Compute Engine?
    What companies use Linode?

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    What tools integrate with DigitalOcean?
    What tools integrate with Google Compute Engine?
    What tools integrate with Linode?

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    Blog Posts

    Dec 8 2020 at 5:50PM

    DigitalOcean

    GitHubMySQLPostgreSQL+11
    2
    2352
    GitHubGitDocker+34
    29
    42418
    What are some alternatives to DigitalOcean, Google Compute Engine, and Linode?
    Vultr
    Strategically located in 16 datacenters around the globe and provides frictionless provisioning of public cloud, storage and single-tenant bare metal.
    Heroku
    Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.
    Microsoft Azure
    Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
    Bitnami
    Our library provides trusted virtual machines for every major development stack and open source server application, ready to run in your infrastructure.
    Amazon EC2
    It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
    See all alternatives