I'm having a few nodes running at VPS.net, but in direct comparison linode seems to offer more for the money. Does someone have experience with both and could compare them?
I have to deal with tech companies all the time. I hate most of them. A lot. They always seem to blow it on customer service, core technology, or pricing.
But not Linode. The prices are really good, their technology is really really good (and they're constantly working on improving it), and their support...? Well, I've submitted a few support tickets (once was even along the lines of, "My backup server is acting strange, the disk isn't full and it can write to existing files but it can't create any new ones. I've been staring at it for about an hour now and I have no clue what's going on.") I've never had a response take more than 7 minutes. They've always been fast, friendly, and knowledgeable.
I really can't say enough good things about them.
They've occasionally had outages, including a couple of ugly ones in Fremont (not directly their fault). How many companies can you think of that are so awesome that, when that happened, it still doesn't tarnish their reputation in your mind?
One of my servers went from using only a little bandwidth to using 25Mb/s almost overnight (customer's website got featured on a radio show). The server never stumbled; I never got a notice along the lines of "hey, you're using a lot of bandwidth there, buddy", I never got throttled, it just worked.
If another VPS provider showed up tomorrow and offered almost everything Linode's offering, feature-wise, but for half the price, I'd stick with Linode.
I could bore you to death with crap like this for probably an hour. All it comes down to is, Linode is one of the few Really Great Companies out there right now, doing business with them is a joy, and I'd love to see them just completely own the VPS market.
edit: oh, and I've been with them since October 2009, which has given them plenty of time to annoy me. They haven't, not even once.
In the end I stayed with them because the inertia was big enough that I was lazy to migrate from them. They certainly did no wrong to reject my request. But I shall remember having to spend the last few hours of the day before evening frowning on the train and working immediately after checking in at the hotel. I could have been made a more loyal customer.
This event is enough to push me over the edge. I shall look into migrating to Linode this weekend. (I have already given them a go several times the past year).
For this reason I am using 32 bit kernels with linode for small instances.