Overview

Amazon EC2

Stacks48.9K

Followers36.0K

Votes2.5K

Linode

Stacks749

Followers623

Votes422

Amazon EC2 vs Linode: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between Amazon EC2 and Linode. Both Amazon EC2 and Linode are popular cloud hosting services that offer virtual servers, but they have some distinct differences that potential users should consider. Let's explore these differences in more detail.

Pricing: One significant difference between Amazon EC2 and Linode is their pricing structures. Amazon EC2 offers a more complex and flexible pricing model, with on-demand, spot instances, and reserved instances options. On the other hand, Linode provides a simpler pricing structure with fixed plans, allowing users to easily determine their costs without any hidden fees.
Scalability and Flexibility: Amazon EC2 offers more scalability and flexibility compared to Linode. With Amazon EC2, users can easily adjust the resources (CPU, RAM, storage, etc.) of their instances to match their requirements, allowing for dynamic scaling. Linode, while still providing scalability, may require users to manually upgrade or downgrade their server plan to adjust their resources.
Global Infrastructure: Amazon EC2 has a vast global infrastructure with multiple regions and availability zones worldwide. This allows users to deploy their instances closer to their target audience, reducing latency and providing better performance. Linode, although expanding its infrastructure, currently has fewer datacenter locations compared to Amazon EC2.
Service Integrations: Amazon EC2 offers a wide range of service integrations and features within the broader Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem. This includes options like Amazon RDS for managed databases, Amazon S3 for object storage, and more. While Linode does provide integrations with some services, its ecosystem is not as extensive as AWS.
Managed Services: Amazon EC2 offers various managed services that can simplify operations and administration for users. These services include the AWS Elastic Load Balancer, Autoscaling, and Amazon EBS for block storage, among others. In contrast, Linode primarily focuses on providing virtual servers and does not offer as many managed service options.
Customer Support: Amazon EC2 provides strong customer support with 24/7 availability and multiple support channels, including phone, email, and live chat. Linode also has good customer support, but it may have limited availability compared to Amazon EC2.

In Summary, Amazon EC2 and Linode have several key differences. Amazon EC2 offers a more flexible pricing structure, extensive service integrations, and better scalability options. It also has a broader global infrastructure and provides a wide range of managed services. On the other hand, Linode offers a simpler pricing structure, decent scalability, and competitive customer support. Users should consider their specific requirements and preferences when choosing between them.

🔥 Trending in Cloud Hosting on StackShare

Ubicloud Cloud Hosting

An open, free, and portable cloud

Try it View Docs Alternatives

Try

0

3

Advice on Amazon EC2, Linode

Craig

Principal Consultant at Rootwork InfoTech LLC

Jul 16, 2020

Decided

We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.

200k views200k

Comments

Jerome/Zen

Software Engineer

Aug 2, 2020

Needs advice

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.

264k views264k

Comments

Rodrigo

SRE

Jul 30, 2021

Decided

Albeit restricted to only a few places worlwide compared to its peers in the cloud segment, I am yet to find another provider capable of delivering a score over 5000 (Geekbench) in a benchmark on a single CPU machine, and each machine costs $6 a month. For homelab and experienced users who don't need DBaaS or IaaC's, it's a pretty straightforward choice. A more comprehensive review of Vultr's HF machines can be found here.

70.2k views70.2k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon EC2	Linode
It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.	Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.
Elastic – Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously.;Completely Controlled – You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine.;Flexible – You have the choice of multiple instance types, operating systems, and software packages. Amazon EC2 allows you to select a configuration of memory, CPU, instance storage, and the boot partition size that is optimal for your choice of operating system and application.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.;Reliable – Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and predictably commissioned. The Amazon EC2 Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.95% availability for each Amazon EC2 Region.;Secure – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon VPC to provide security and robust networking functionality for your compute resources.;Inexpensive – Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon’s scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume.;Easy to Start – Quickly get started with Amazon EC2 by visiting AWS Marketplace to choose preconfigured software on Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). You can quickly deploy this software to EC2 via 1-Click launch or with the EC2 console.	Deploy multiple Linux distributions;Create Configuration Profiles which associate disk images and device nodes;Boot between configuration profiles;Share disk images between configuration profiles;Resize disk images;Network and CPU usage graphs;Multiple IP address support;Managed/hosted DNS service with slave support;Custom reverse DNS (rdns);Access Out of band console access using Lish;Lish menu system to issue jobs to your Linode;Lish access via SSH keys;Support for booting into single user mode, init=/bin/bash;Support for booting with a custom "root=" kernel parameter;Support for booting with an initrd;Bootable recovery distribution (Finnix);Add and remove extra resources to and from your Linode;Shutdown Watchdog will automatically reboot your Linode in case of a crash;Clone a Linode to another;Move IPs from one Linode to another;IP address fail over support for high availability setups
Statistics
Stacks 48.9K	Stacks 749
Followers 36.0K	Followers 623
Votes 2.5K	Votes 422
Pros & Cons
Pros 647 Quick and reliable cloud servers 515 Scalability 393 Easy management 277 Low cost 271 Auto-scaling Cons 14 Ui could use a lot of work 6 High learning curve when compared to PaaS 3 Extremely poor CPU performance	Pros 100 Extremely reliable 70 Good value 60 Great customer support 58 Easy to configure 37 Great documentation Cons 2 No "floating IP" support

What are some alternatives to Amazon EC2, Linode?

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.

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.

Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.

Scaleway

European cloud computing company proposing a complete & simple public cloud ecosystem, bare-metal servers & private datacenter infrastructures.

Rackspace Cloud Servers

Cloud Servers is based on OpenStack, the open and scalable operating system for building public and private clouds. With the open cloud, you get reliable cloud hosting, without locking your data into one proprietary platform.

Google Cloud Platform

It helps you build what's next with secure infrastructure, developer tools, APIs, data analytics and machine learning. It is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search and YouTube.

Gandi

Gandi VPS Cloud Hosting offers you a flexible server with dedicated resources. The VPS virtualization is made possible by Xen technology.

WebFaction

No need to spend hours installing and configuring the software, database and other tools. We have over 50 one-click installers in our control panel.

Joyent Cloud

Joyent is the high-performance cloud infrastructure company, offering the only solution specifically built to power real-time web and mobile applications.

Vultr

Strategically located in 16 datacenters around the globe and provides frictionless provisioning of public cloud, storage and single-tenant bare metal.