Slicehost vs. Linode vs. ???

I have some projects in mind that would require some hosting – and not just some casual web-hosting, but actual root access.

If I will ever get the time to work on the projects is another issue, but the first step would be to actually get some hosting.

A quick Google search seem to indicate that Slicehost and Linode pretty much provide what I’m looking for, at a reasonable price.

So far I’m leaning towards Linode. Mainly because they have a data center in London, and I might as well have the host as close to me as possible, should all cables across the Atlantic suddenly be severed.
They also seem to have a little lower prices on what to me looks like comparable products. But I haven’t made up my mind yet.
If you have any experience with either of the two companies I would appreciate your thoughts in the comments below.
Also, if you know of companies that provide similar services (within the same price range), let me know, but my quick Google search seems to come up with only the two companies.

Thank you in advance.

22 thoughts on “Slicehost vs. Linode vs. ???”

  1. I use Linode for my server, and they are very good. A nice touch is they will from time to time upgrade all plans. One day I woke up to find my 348mb RAM linode now had 512mb, for nothing extra! Mine is located in Newark, NJ, and I have never had a problem. The network speed is very fast. I have not used slicehost before, but I would still recommend Linode.

  2. I am a satisfied Linode user. I live in England, so having a server in London was a bonus. I have run Debian Lenny and now Ubuntu Lucid. They have a very flexible DNS service, or of course you can run your own. There is an recovery console you can use if you make a mess of things on your server.

    Ian.

  3. Saw this via the planet and thought that because I’ve been (and still am) with a few different companies, I should chime in.

    In short: Linode would definitely get my vote over Slicehost.

    Slicehost might have made XEN-based hosting sexy, but their pricing hasn’t kept up with the times (they either need to lower their prices or improve their plans in line with lower hardware costs). Linode gives you a lot more power for your money and choice over datacentre

    You might also bump into a company called VPS.net. Everything looks amazing. They have more features than most other hosts but they cram far too much on a server and their infrastructure has too many points of failure. The result is a slower-than-should-be server with random spikes of downtime.

    I wrote a big complaint about their services with a benchmark against Linode here: http://thepcspy.com/read/why-i-cant-recommend-vpsnet/

    I don’t want to be all-negative. Linode are, in their own right, a good company. They let you know when they find an issue and give fairly realistic deadlines. They’re easy to contact via email and IRC and their community is quite good helping you fix things (a good primary support layer for quick fixes).

    If you find any of that useful, there’s an affiliate link at the bottom of the post above that would give me a $20 credit against my hosting. I won’t post it here because I don’t want to spam it around, but it’s there if you’d like to show your appreciation ;)

    I’m also with another London-based company called Tagadab. Great performance and uptime but their web UI is not as complete as Linode’s. A little more expensive than Linode too (depending on the exchange rate). Very corporate but very good support (I had problems and was speaking to one of their directors within a few hours of sending them an email).

  4. Hi!

    I’ve been a customer of Slicehost for quite some time. When I got my first “slice”, I didn’t know about Linode, and they didn’t have a data center in London at that time.

    Slicehost was cool for me. Just fill out one form, enter you credit card details and less than 5 minutes later you have a root VPS. Slicehost provides a management interface, even a mobile one, with which you can e.g. reboot your slice when you are on your way.

    Some time later I learned about Linode, that they are offering a product similar to Slicehost, and that they have data center in London. I got the next VPS I needed (you can just set up one for some days) from Linode – and was fascinated what their management interfaces offered compared to Slicehost. E.g. you can access the VT of you VPS via SSH – even if the network on your server is not configured. Slicehost does only offer an AJAX interface, which was broken for me most of the time. You can reboot etc. your server via the SSH interface quite easily – even from your mobile.

    So, for me, living in Europe, it makes more sense to have the server in Europe. The latency is much lower and I had never network problems with Linode.

    Hope I could help you,
    Chris

  5. I’m pretty happy with Linode. They recently upped the RAM on all their plans and slicehost hasn’t yet responded. RAM is generally the big ticket item on personal hosting, so this is pretty handy.

    Linode also offers a backup service and discounts for

    Finally, if you havent seen http://journal.uggedal.com/vps-performance-comparison , you should take a look. Note that it was benchmarked before the Linode RAM upgrade and any other changes from competitors.

  6. This summer I was looking for a VPS too, but Linode and Slice host were too expensive for me. Then I found http://secure.hazenet.co.uk/aff.php?aff=002 .
    At the time they had a 40% off deal. Now its 30%, but the specs that you’ll be getting on your VPS are way higher than anything I’ve seen while doing my research for the price that youre paying. The service is good too, and I’ve yet to experience downtime.

  7. I’ve been using Linode for almost 3 years (3 year anniversary coming up in next month!). Not only have I been impressed with their reliablity, but their service upgrades (RAM and disk space) have been great and their customer service (both via tickets and their very active #linode on irc.oftc.net) has always been exceptional.

    Additionally, they love the community :) ubuntu-us.org and ubuntupennsylvania.org currently run on a Linode donated to us. They’ve also given them to non-profits and open source conferences in need of hosting.

  8. When I asked the same question a few years back, pretty much everyone I talked to recommended Linode. I went with them, and after two years I’m quite happy with the service. Uptime has been great, and the availability of staff on IRC and community support is great. I’m a bit peeved about the somewhat underhanded way they’re handling Wikileaks currently, but that’s my only gripe so far.

  9. I have a cheap dedicated machine at OVH. Both datacenters in France. It’s cheapest if you go via the German website, the French site is abou 15% more.

  10. I’ve heard good things about both Slicehost and Linode, though I haven’t used any of them myself.

    Personally I’m just fine with a Dreamhost account (not VPS), which gives me SSH-access (not root, but crontab), git/svn, tons of space – but not the possibility of running background processes like you can on a VPS. But then again I also have access to my own always-on VMware environment where I can play around with root access as much as I’d like.

    You probably do need root access (well you specifically asked for it) and background processes, but on the off-chance that all you need is actually just crontab and a ssh-shell, then let me know; I can probably fix you up with something cheap/free.
    To have root + background on Dreamhost you’re paying an additional 15$, in which case you’ll probably go to Linode or Slicehost.

    As someone else mentioned there’s also the chance of playing around for free for the next year on an Amazon EC2 micro-instance. BTW I think your roommate is using MediaTemple hosting and is quite happy about it, although that looks quite pricey to me.

    Feel free to give me a call or bring it up Thursday if you want additional input. Also I’m quite curious what you’re project ideas are brewing up there in your head. :)

  11. Been with Linode for 3 years. I have 2 machines, one in Dallas the other in California. I live in Australia. Very happy with the service and network speed / latency. Haven’t had to contact support yet so i can’t comment on that except to say that I haven’t needed it.

  12. I would stay far, far away from anything that gives you “burst” RAM. Often these use OpenVZ or Virtuozzo to split the system up. You’ll might find they’re cheaper but also that the entire system is under higher contention (more virtual servers on one host machine). I’ve used a client’s Virtuozzo-VPS once (from 1&1) and it was useless compared to similar XEN-based products. Also the sliding RAM allotment is not helpful when you’re trying to manage a stable production machine.

    Similarly anything that says it’s hosted on a SAN… Steer away. A SAN is a big bank of shared, RAIDed disks. Normally you’d assume this was a good thing but you’re at the mercy of the hosting company to keep performance and stability high… Something in my experience (grrr VPS.net) they can’t be trusted to do.

    MediaTemple VPS accounts (DV) are both a long way away from Europe and not altogether that good. A client (that I’ve since moved to VPS.net and then onto Linode) was originally with them. Paying $1500 a year for 1.5gigs of RAM and the system was completely asthmatic. Support tried to help but ended up making generic “have you tried turning it off and on again” style recommendations.

  13. Hi Søren,

    I use SliceHost but I am considering moving over because of their price point.

    A friend has used EuroVPS/EcoVPS for some years now with critical sites and is pretty satisfied with it:
    * http://www.ecovps.com/

    Their pricing is unbeatable and they are connected to the Internet backbone in Amsterdam which gives great speed in Europe and even respectable speed in the USA:
    * http://www.ecovps.com/about-us.html

    Lykke til med valg av VPS leverandør og ha en fin mandag!

    R.

  14. You probably made your choice, but:

    I’m a happy Linode user. Nice control panel, good service. Good stability, and they’re nice about passing hardware savings on to their customers as they occur. However, should I choose today, I think I would go for the mini instance on AWS. Edges Linode out on price and flexibility and there are tons of AMIs out there, so it’s quite easy to get something up and running fast.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.