Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Linode vs Google Cloud Platform, the Slant community recommends Linode for most people. In the question“What are the best VPS providers?” Linode is ranked 2nd while Google Cloud Platform is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Linode is:
Linode's support is amazing. Tickets are usually answered within minutes, if there's a network or hardware issue it's usually resolved before anyone even notices.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Excellent support
Linode's support is amazing. Tickets are usually answered within minutes, if there's a network or hardware issue it's usually resolved before anyone even notices.
Pro Gives you the chance to fix problems without relying on support
If you mess things up in your Linode instance, for example with the filesystem or boot configuration, Linode allows you to run a recovery ISO so you can try and fix things yourself without relying on Linode's support team.
Pro Speed
Their VPSs are very fast.
Pro Allows you to do things that usually can only be done if you have access to the hardware
Linode allows you to create memory partitions and copy or move them around. Furthermore, it even lets you reboot your instance with smaller RAM in order to simulate how your application would act if your Linode instance gets downgraded.
Pro Comprehensive, well documented API
The API gives access to nodes, nodebalancers, stackscripts, DNS, and accounts.
Pro Provides SDKs for several languages
SDKs are available for Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Java, and Node.js.
Pro Stack scripts
Stack scripts gives you the chance to build a completely custom Linode stack with multiple custom features and options all run automatically and set up.
Pro New Cloud Beta user interface
A new user interface is under development which will still keep the same level of power Linode offers but with a cleaner interface. Showing forward thinking and continued improvement.
Pro TPUs
Tensor Processing Units are bare-metal units designed to train your Machine Learning models faster. This is exclusive only to Google Cloud Platform.
Pro Free tier
GCP gives your 365 days of free trial and 300 US$ credit including a Always Free if you upgrade.
Pro Live-migrating VMs
Your VMs will still run even if there is a maintenance work going on to the tenant running your VM - thanks to Google's Live-migration system.
Pro Clear IAM roles
Unlike most Enterprise-grade IAM role systems, GCP has a clearer IAM permissions model, with Azure following.
Pro First-class Kubernetes support
Kubernetes is a project from Google's Borg. GCP is the first Kubernetes-Certified infrastructure.
Pro Secure and efficient to the core
Google datacenters are built with minimal security issues in mind while still reducing carbon footprint, making Google datacenters a much more greener infrastructure than competitors.
Pro Runs on the same infrastructure with Google's Services
Google's datacenters runs your favorite video streaming services and even Google itself. Discord also relies on GCP to handle its workloads.
Cons
Con Backups have become unreliable
I've been a Linode customer for 10+ years, but over the past 3+ years their backups have become unreliable, which is unacceptable for a paid extra to the service. I've had multiple issues with backups failing, and restoring from a backup has caused my VPS to fail to deliver website content for reasons neither I nor Linode support could figure out. In the end, I just had to rebuild the server from scratch with a personal backup.
Con Not really suitable if you have a very heavy CPU application
They'll cap your usage if you go above 80% for a sustained period - even on very large expensive boxes (if you use Load Balancers offered, this can be mitigated).
Con For more advanced users
Can be an issue for those not used to setting up their own server. Managed services are really expensive if help is needed.
Con No self-help migrating option
If you want to migrate to another hosting solution from Linode, you can't do it by yourself. You have to open a support ticket.
Con Treats customer as a liability
Many malpractices in the name of machine abuse. Their machines get abused with just 10% steady cpu utilization.
Con Expensive
GCP might be cheaper than AWS but it is more expensive than Azure. The main reason for this might be because of the extensive investment done for datacenters being efficient and green and secure.
Con Live Migrating VMs does not apply to GPU-attached VMs
Because this kind of VMs has a direct passthrough to the Processing Unit, this is not available and restart only will be available for the VM attached.
Con Unstable Egress/Ingress
Google Cloud Platform is a bit unstable with its egress and ingress. You may receive subtle blips when maintenance work is being carried on the routing.
