DigitalOcean vs Linode vs PythonAnywhere

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DigitalOcean

17.7K
13K
+ 1
2.6K
Linode

743
620
+ 1
422
PythonAnywhere

93
291
+ 1
64

DigitalOcean vs Linode vs PythonAnywhere: What are the differences?

  1. Scalability: DigitalOcean and Linode both provide scalable solutions, allowing users to easily upgrade their resources as their needs grow. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, has more limited scalability options and is not as well-suited for high-traffic applications.

  2. Managed Services: DigitalOcean offers Managed Databases, Managed Kubernetes, and App Platform for easier deployment and management of applications. Linode also provides managed services, including NodeBalancers and Managed Kubernetes. PythonAnywhere, while being user-friendly, lacks these managed services, requiring more manual setup and configuration.

  3. Server Locations: DigitalOcean and Linode have a wider range of server locations across the globe, providing more options for geographical redundancy and low latency connections. PythonAnywhere, however, has a more limited number of server locations, which may impact performance and accessibility for users in certain regions.

  4. Development Environment: PythonAnywhere is specifically tailored for Python development and hosting, providing a built-in console, editor, and tools optimized for Python programming. While DigitalOcean and Linode can also support Python applications, they offer a broader range of development environment options for various languages and frameworks.

  5. Community and Support: DigitalOcean and Linode have large and active communities, extensive documentation, and reliable customer support, making it easier for users to troubleshoot issues and get help when needed. PythonAnywhere, while having a supportive community, may not offer as diverse and extensive support resources compared to DigitalOcean and Linode.

  6. Pricing and Cost: DigitalOcean and Linode have competitive pricing plans with transparent pricing structures, making it easier for users to estimate costs. PythonAnywhere, while offering a free tier, may become more costly for advanced features and resources compared to DigitalOcean and Linode.

In Summary, the key differences between DigitalOcean, Linode, and PythonAnywhere lie in scalability, managed services, server locations, development environment options, community and support, and pricing and cost.

Decisions about DigitalOcean, Linode, and PythonAnywhere

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 · 61.4K 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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Pros of DigitalOcean
Pros of Linode
Pros of PythonAnywhere
  • 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
  • 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
  • 15
    Web apps
  • 11
    Easy Setup
  • 8
    Great support
  • 8
    Shell access
  • 8
    Free plan
  • 7
    Super-easy to use
  • 5
    Libraries
  • 2
    Many things like Python are pre-installed

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Cons of DigitalOcean
Cons of Linode
Cons of PythonAnywhere
  • 3
    No live support chat
  • 3
    Pricing
  • 2
    No "floating IP" support
  • 1
    No root access
  • 1
    Really small community

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 Linode?

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

What is PythonAnywhere?

It's somewhat unique. A small PaaS that supports web apps (Python only) as well as scheduled jobs with shell access. It is an expensive way to tinker and run several small apps.

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What companies use DigitalOcean?
What companies use Linode?
What companies use PythonAnywhere?

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What tools integrate with DigitalOcean?
What tools integrate with Linode?
What tools integrate with PythonAnywhere?

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Blog Posts

Dec 8 2020 at 5:50PM

DigitalOcean

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What are some alternatives to DigitalOcean, Linode, and PythonAnywhere?
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