DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is an American cloud infrastructure provider founded in 2011, renowned for introducing developer-friendly virtual server instances called Droplets. It provides virtual compute, Kubernetes clusters (DOKS), ma...
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DigitalOcean vs Akamai Linode
Compare services, billing and support. Then open the plans to check the exact resources and price for your project.
Choose or change providers 2–4 providers
Akamai Linode
Linode, founded in 2003 and acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2022, is an established pioneer in Linux virtual server hosting. Integrating with Akamai global edge distribution, Linode provides virtual machines, object s...
Choosing DigitalOcean
A practical way to assess the fit.
- When to consider it
- Evaluate Droplets when you need a configurable virtual machine. Choose the CPU and memory family around your workload, rather than treating every Droplet as interchangeable.
- What to check
- A Droplet and App Platform provide different management boundaries. Check whether you want to operate a server or deploy through a platform.
- Cost considerations
- Include backups, additional storage and any other separately priced services in your budget. Compare the selected configuration and regional availability.
Choosing Akamai Linode
A practical way to assess the fit.
- When to consider it
- Evaluate Akamai’s compute families when you need a cloud instance. Shared, dedicated and high-memory options serve different resource needs.
- What to check
- Compare the actual CPU class and memory, then verify the region and any additional services your deployment needs.
- Cost considerations
- Use the selected instance’s billing terms and include optional storage, backups and other resources separately. A provider’s smallest listed price is not the cost of every deployment.
How to decide
Choose the service boundary first.
Are you buying a server to manage, a managed website service or an application platform? Compare providers that support your deployment path, then check the exact plan, ongoing cost and location.
| Criterion | DigitalOcean | Akamai Linode |
|---|---|---|
| Products and hosting scope | Compute offerings include Shared CPU Droplets (Basic Regular SSD and Premium Intel/AMD with NVMe), Dedicated CPU Droplets (General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, Memory-Optimized, and Storage-Optimized), GPU Droplets powered by NVIDIA H100s, Block Storage Volumes, and Cloud Firewalls. | Compute products include Shared CPU instances (entry-level Nanode and Standard plans), Dedicated CPU instances (guaranteed 100% vCPU allocation for production), High Memory instances, GPU instances with NVIDIA RTX6000 Ada, Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE), and Cloud Firewalls. |
| Billing and renewal terms | Compute instances are metered hourly and capped at a maximum of 672 hours (28 days) per calendar month. Destroying a Droplet terminates compute billing, but persistent block volumes and snapshots continue to incur separate storage charges. Inbound data transfer is free; outbound data transfer is pooled account-wide. | Hourly metering capped at 672 hours per month. Linode Backup Service is available as an automated add-on starting at $2 to $5/month for smaller instances. Network transfer is pooled across all active compute instances in an account. |
| Regions and availability | DigitalOcean operates 9 global data center regions: New York (NYC1, NYC3), San Francisco (SFO2, SFO3), Amsterdam (AMS3), Singapore (SGP1), London (LON1), Frankfurt (FRA1), Toronto (TOR1), Bangalore (BLR1), and Sydney (SYD1). Specific hardware families and GPU Droplets vary by region. | Available in 25+ global core cloud regions spanning North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. |
| Support scope | All accounts receive free standard ticket-based support and access to an extensive documentation and community tutorial library. Paid Developer ($24/month) and Business support plans offer prioritized ticket queues and technical response time SLAs. | 24/7 live telephone support and web ticketing are included on all accounts at no extra charge, a distinctive differentiator among cloud infrastructure providers. |
| Restrictions and considerations | Automated Droplet backups are not included by default and cost an additional 20% of the base Droplet price. Shared CPU Droplets are subject to hypervisor time-slicing and temporary steal time under noisy neighbor conditions. Bandwidth exceeding pooled account quotas is billed at $0.01 per GB. | Nanode plans have strict single-core shared limits (1 GB RAM) unsuitable for memory-hungry Java or heavy Python workers without swap. Egress overages beyond pooled limits cost $0.01 per GB in standard regions. |
| Plans in the catalog | 6 · See plans | 24 · See plans |
You can share this page's URL. Hardware, currency, regional and support differences need a plan-level comparison.
Understand the deployment
Same project. Different responsibilities.
These are common service models. The exact boundaries depend on the product contract.
A server you manage
ServerYour runtimeYour application
You configure the operating system and software. Budget time or help for updates, access control and recovery.
Plan server resourcesA managed website service
Provider’s stackYour website
Check which maintenance and backup tasks are included, alongside website, storage and runtime limits.
Explore WordPress needsAn application platform
Your codePlatform buildDeployment
Match your framework to platform limits. Include functions, databases and usage billing in the decision.
Compare platform options