If a user has a well-designed website and is looking forward to outdoing competitors in the industry, then a web hosting service is a must-have component. However, selecting the exemplary hosting service for their project is somewhat confusing because of the large number of web hosting providers in today’s market.
A simple Google search and user will get bombarded with numerous hosting provider details, making it challenging to select one that best suits their needs. In this tutorial, we will discuss two of those hosting providers, Linode and AWS. Hoping by the time one has done reading this tutorial, they will be able to make an informed decision on whether to choose Linode or AWS as the web hosting provider.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Linode are trustworthy hosting providers, and users should consider them because of their commitment and dedication to customer value. The Linode and Amazon Web Services (AWS) web hosting service providers stand out from other service providers because they offer top-notch services that target high-end customers. Additionally, users will only be billed based on the resources they use as opposed to long-term contracts.
Although payment based on the resources used sounds incredible, it is essential to explore the disadvantages of it.
This Linode vs AWS comparison tutorial will walk through these two hosting providers’ reliability, features, advantages, and disadvantages. This tutorial is designed to help customers answer the primary question: “Which is the best option for the customer?”
Linode and Amazon Web Services at a Glance
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a branch of Amazon that offers a suite of cloud computing services, such as web hosting. Although AWS started in 2002, its popularity started increasing after the customer event conducted in 2012 that helped everyone rethink Amazon beyond selling books and consumer products on its marketplace.
Amazon used this November 2012 event to demonstrate its commitment to deliver and innovate better web hosting services than what consumers and clients already had in the market.
The CIA (Criminal Intelligence Agency) awarded AWS with a $600 million contract in October 2013. Amazon used this partnership with the Criminal Intelligence Agency as an opportunity to demonstrate the quality of the services that they offer. By 2015, AWS had reached the milestone of over a million active monthly users, including 5,000 educational institutions and 2,000 government agencies in more than 190 countries.
Linode is an American-based cloud hosting company that offers virtual private servers (VPS). Linode Cloud is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The company’s name, “Linode”, is a portmanteau of the words “Linux” and “node”. Linode was founded by Christopher Aker in 2003, who wanted to offer seamless hosting services to companies, website developers, and government agencies. Christopher Aker founded Linode in 2003 to provide seamless hosting services to website developers, government agencies, and companies. Linode services are impressive, even if they only have a single website. Linode had reached the milestone of 400,000 clients by early 2019.
Reliability
During this Linode vs AWS comparison, we found out that both Linode and Amazon have invested massively in their services to guarantee high reliability for their customers. Amazon has installed some modern servers and data centers as part of cloud hosting infrastructures in the industry.
When a user signs up for AWS, Amazon assures automated backups, full redundancy, and server cloning for their users. Though Amazon does not provide statistics on speed and uptime, their servers are up and running more than 99.9%. Amazon usually refers to its high profile customers such as Airbnb, Netflix, and Unilever to demonstrate its high reliability.
We were impressed by the high uptime of Linode during this comparison, which is more than 99.98%. Like AWS, Linode promises customers high uptime of 99.9% but does not provide any statistics. Linode offers 24/7 server monitoring for all its users to ensure that issues are discovered and addressed before they become significant problems.
Features
To understand if a web service provider is the best choice for a customer, it is reasonable to evaluate its features comprehensively. AWS offers a wide range of features that help it to provide content delivery, scheduled backups, and elastic load balancer.
The main features offered by AWS can be classified into four categories: content delivery, storage, networking, and databases. Note that once a user signs up with Amazon Web Services, they can take complete control of the features, and also, they can customize features based on their needs.
In addition to the above features, AWS also offers a wide range of application programming interfaces (APIs) and third-party programs. The Application Programming Interfaces offered helps customers to access the AWS on their website or other platforms for easier control. This means that the customer no longer needs to have an AWS interface for their website. They can use the suitable API to access AWS directly on their website.
Like Amazon Web Services, Linode also offers various features, such as Intel E5 processors and solid-state drives (SSDs). These features provided by Linode are used to enhance the performance and speed of the servers.
Linode will also provide customers with StackScripts that help to make website management effortless and straightforward. StackScripts delivers a flexible way to customize the deployment of web content, such as videos and images.
Linode mainly targets customers with computing backgrounds, the features offered by Linode come with a great deal of flexibility. For example, customers can opt to upgrade to a larger RAM or bandwidth to increase the speed of their site.
Pros and Cons of Linode
Pros of Linode
- Linode uses an easy billing model and offers cheaper hosting services compared to AWS.
- Linode support is professional and responsive.
- The mobile application and user interface are easy and simple to use.
- Free data backups are offered for all the customer plans.
Cons of Linode
- When compared to AWS, upgrading the hosting account at Linode is a time-consuming process.
- Suppose a user moves the data center or deletes a node, the IP address changes. However, the IP address does not change in the case of Amazon Web Services.
Conclusion
In this comparison, we found that although the AWS name could easily deceive customers because of Amazon’s popularity, it offers similar features and reliability as Linode. AWS has been working hard to simplify its pricing, but still, the cost is high.
Unlike AWS, Linode has flexible plans and offers a wide range of features for its clients. While the services are aimed at web designers and developers, the flexibility of Linode makes it ideal for all. Hope this tutorial was helpful, and do reach out to us if you have any query or suggestions.
