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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Nice. Apart from the security incident that took place long time ago, are there any reason why everyone is going straight to DO instead of Linode?

For a long time Linode has had better features, performance and bandwidth. It wasn't until recently DO had Managed DB and many other additions.

Linode's High Memory Plan also has much better Memory : CPU Ratio.

Still waiting for their CDN, ( Not sure why they are not exposing it and instead requires going through CS ), Managed DB and Bare Metal. Once those three are in place, ( and well tested ) It should provide decent competition to the HyperScalers.

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The security issue and its appalling handling was not trivial, it'll take a long time to regain that trust. DO is more widely used nowadays, which has resulted in a larger community utilising the API integrations etc. DOs managed Kubernetes etc are also much more stable (or at least claim to be, Linodes are still in beta).

Better marketing from DO. There strategy of content marketing with how-to guides has been massively successful.

Personally, think DO has a more pleasant UX too.

DO has been posting (or rather, spamming IMHO) /r/golang with fluff like "how to use switch statement in Go". You know, the sort of articles that someone who learned Go a week ago can write.

As a former marketing co-worker once told me: marketing is pretty much just standing around flapping your arms to get attention.

The content might be dumb, but it drives eyeballs and you remember DO.

Their server admin guides seem to be good, though. Whenever I google for how to do x things, their articles tend to come up. (I'm not a professional admin, obviously)

Marketing goes a long way. It makes me wonder how many products/services are out there which are actually much better than the well-marketed ones, but we just don't hear about them because they don't have the same level of marketing.

I actually don't use DO, but I've used their articles many times after searching for how to setup some things on Linux. Their tutorials are excellent and have saved me a ton of time. I'd imagine those articles alone drive a lot of traffic to them.

I am not sure how is it now but not that long ago there were slight differences in backup price and floating ips. If i remember on Linode backups cost almost twice than DO. On Vultr you had to pay for floating ip which you dont on DO.

Also from benchmarks ive seen Linode was inconsistent and overall not that faster than it looks on paper. Vultr was best in things like cpu performance but had slower networking. DO was just ok in any matrics.

If you add that DO has best admin panel, usually are first with most services like Spaces (which are not that amazing but OK) and sponsor lot of good content (tutorials, podcasts).

They are all similar services once you get one one of them there arent many reasons to switch. Like i looked into vultr high frequency compute for new service and then i realized i will have to deal with two invoices instead of one every month... so i just used DO:))

Two things that made me migrate (mostly) to DO from Linode:

1. For a long time, Linode did not have a terrform provider 2. DO's managed Kubernetes offering Just Works, and is very competitively priced

FWIW, I still run a small Linode box. It's been rock-solid, and the support they provide is absolutely top-notch.

I've been a Linode customer since 2009, but I'm slowly migrating away to DO. Their k8s works great, and the managed Postgres/Redis is ideal for me.

Who is "everyone"? Linode has been my primary choice over DO for some years.

Pretty much Reddit and HN Sentiment. And if you look at the growth of DO it is apparent DO is outgrowing its competitors.

Can you share where you have the growth number between cloud vendors?

DO has a better web interface and solid marketing, which includes writing a ton of tutorials that show in search engines when people are looking for system admin type stuff. This makes them pretty popular.

Linode has better resources for the price and really solid support, so I tend to stick with them.

A lot of it was inertia. But after some recent bad experiences with DO, we're planning on giving competitors a try. Looks like Linode is just the ticket; thank you for pointing it out.

Careful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845278

Not sure why this is being continuously downvoted. But thank you for everyone else that took the time to answer the question.

> Apart from the security incident that took place long time ago, are there any reason why everyone is going straight to DO instead of Linode?

Which one? I count at least 4 off the top of my head.

And the problem wasn’t just those security incidents, it was Linode lying and covering them up.

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