Not to diss Linode, I use them myself, but they're not the cheapest. It's quite evident to me that these free upgrades are a defensive tactic.
How much memory or disk space would $20 a month get from other providers 3 years ago?
I'll pay the extra few bucks for reliability and decent uptime.
I had very frequent downtimes and the support was often unhelpful. I heard from others that it was just the datacenter that my VPS was on and other DC weren't as bad, but I guess it gave me enough of a bad impression that I went back to Linode anyway.
Linode it is!
Also, my Linodes seem to have much more consistent CPU performance. With DO it's been very hit or miss at that 1/2GB size. They may be cramming too many VMs on their hosts.
Same for the hardware. they are the new kids on the block. For now it's the newest and shiniest but long term lets see how they keep pace. Linode's been around a while and done a good job of dragging all it's customer's along to newer hardware.
I'm not seeing how this is a record superior to Linode. That said, I use DO due to its price point for hobby/testing projects and dropped Linode completely.
Another interesting thing is that right now, I charge a $4/account charge, then a incremental fee, right now $1 for every 64mib ram/1.5gb disk, which means that as you get a larger plan, you get more stuff for your money. As far as I can tell, none of the other players do that (and some competitors do the opposite, giving you more resources per dollar on the smaller plans than on the larger plans.) - so I am wondering if I should reduce or eliminate that fee.
But I dunno if that makes sense, given purchasing decisions and your cost structure. Are people's purchase decisions keying off transfer quota at all, or are RAM/HDD are the real price-point issues? And if they are, would doubling transfer, say, make a difference, or would you have to match Linode (currently offering 10x the transfer at equivalent price points)? So maybe this is a dumb idea.
For a long time, it was that my network was so shitty that doubling traffic would make the thing fall over, but that problem is fixed... new network is way more robust. so yeah, I should increase transfer expectations.
I mean, in reality, I follow the 'use all you want, limit you when you get crazy' model, rather than hitting you with a big bill when you go over. (I should make that a selectable option) so it's really similar to what digital ocean is doing with their 'unlimited' - obviously, if you go crazy on an 'unlimited' system, you get limited. My limits are 'setting expectations' - but right now they are setting expectations that would have been reasonable in 2007, which is silly, as my current network is pretty robust, and really can handle more.