You know about the three cloud hosts DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode but you don’t know which one is the best?
In this ultimate comparison, we will compare these three leading companies and see what works best for whom in terms of pricing, ease of use, performance, WordPress installation, and more.
So by the end, you will be able to distinguish the best cloud hosting service for your web application.
Comparison Overview
We have conducted a well-researched comparison between these legendary companies. But if you don’t want to go over each detail in this article, here’s a table that sums up the whole comparison.
| Comparison | DigitalOcean | Vultr | Linode |
| Ease of use | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| 1 GB Plan | $6/month | $5/month | $5/month |
| 1 GB Premium | $7/month | $6/month | – |
| Cheapest plan | $4/mo | $2.5/mo | $5/mo |
| NVMe | Yes | Yes | No |
| Uptime | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Uptime Guarantee | 99.99% | 100.00% | 99.99% |
| Speed | Fast | Fast | Fast |
| Data centers | 13 | 28 | 11 |
| Install WordPress | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Free credit | DigitalOcean $200 | Vultr $100 Credit | Linode $100 Credit |
From the table above, we see that Vultr has been a better choice many times, so we recommend Vultr the most.
Important Terms?
Before we dive in, let’s define some terms to make it clear for you to get the best out of this research.
DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode are companies that provide cheap price self-managed cloud hosting services.
What is UnManaged Web Hosting?
Self-managed or unmanaged web hosting means that the web hosting company provides the hosting environment that you want, but you do all the servers and applications configuration and fix the errors on your own.
The good thing about this is that it offers these servers at low prices, as they won’t provide support or application configuration.
On the other hand, you have to know some stuff about server configuration customization to be able to deal with any issue that might face you. And that’s not hard to achieve nowadays, you may find a solution for every issue you might face after a little search on Google.
What Is Cloud Computing?
Linode, DigitalOcean, and Vultr are cloud computing services. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet. These services include servers, storage, databases, networking, etc.
Unlike other web hosting types, websites that are hosted on cloud hosting servers are not deployed on a single server. Instead, a network of connected virtual and physical cloud servers (Clusters) host the websites.
What are the benefits of Cloud hosting?
There are great benefits that can’t be denied to be gained from choosing Cloud hosting over others. Here are some reasons why cloud hosting is considered a better web hosting solution than other web hosting types:
Low cost:
When using a cloud hosting server, you pay only for the resources you consumed “Pay as you Go”.
Also, the cloud hosting service eliminates the expenditures of the resources needed to run and manage your own infrastructure. Accordingly, the prices for renting the server will be decreased.
Fast servers:
In addition to the dedicated resources it offers, the Cloud computing services provide self-service and on-demand, which reduces the pressure on the applications. And that’s what makes it even faster.
Reliability:
Cloud hosting providers host a copy of your websites and applications on a cluster of servers so that when any server fails to deliver the content, another server will do the job.
That way your website won’t stop working at any level, therefore, the reliability of the cloud hosting increases.
Scalability:
On cloud servers, you can easily upgrade or downgrade your resources to the amount of resources you need. You don’t need to move to another big server while you grow your business.
For instance, if you started small and hosted your website on a cloud server, and after a certain time you grew your business, you can easily scale up your server from your server dashboard provider.
This can be seen in other web hosting types such as shared hosting, but the scalability they offer is limited.
The other good thing is that if your web application experiences a sudden increase in traffic, the cloud server can handle it without any issues.
Security:
Cloud hosting services provide many security features and technologies for customers to keep their data and applications safe.
Cloud vs VPS: What are the differences?
People often get confused when they hear that there is a cloud hosting type that provides dedicated resources on a shared CPU and there is a VPS hosting type that provides the same dedicated resources on a shared CPU.
Yes, that is right.
The big difference between VPS hosting and the Cloud hosting is that Cloud hosting delivers the service over the internet while VPS is just a part of a physical server, when someone requests an order it serves him directly.
So we can call the cloud hosting “Cloud VPS” and the VPS “Normal or Standard VPS”.
About DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode
DigitalOcean, Vultr, And Linode are three of the cloud hosting leading companies on the internet. They power a decent amount of websites.
But what are they exactly?
What is DigitalOcean?
DigitalOcean is a leading cloud service provider infrastructure located in the United States.
A managed hosting business company called Server Stack was founded in 2003 until the founders of that company decided to combine web hosting and virtual servers.
That idea of combining web hosting and virtual servers brought DigitalOcean cloud service on June 24th, 2011. Read DigitalOcean review.
Quickly DigitalOcean possessed a place on the market and became one of the first cloud-hosting companies to offer SSD-based virtual machines in 2013.
Moreover, DigitalOcean has 13 data centers and customers building their websites and applications on it in 185 countries around the world.
What Is Vultr?
Vultr is a global cloud hosting solution that provides reliable and high-performance cloud servers.
Vultr started its journey in 2014 with a mission to authorize developers with seamless cloud infrastructure. Read Vultr review.
Also, Vultr is also an American web hosting company, and its servers are not just in the united states. Vultr runs its servers in 25 data centers around the globe.
From the time it was launched in 2014 till 2021 Vultr has deployed over 45 million (instances) cloud servers.
What Is Linode?
Linode is a cloud hosting company based in the United States that provides virtual private servers.
Linode was founded in 2003. From that time, it’s been transitioned several times until it became a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) in 2015.
Also, Linode is considered as one of the best web hosting providers that provide cloud computing servers with great performance and reliability. Read Linode review.
Linode operates 11 data centers in seven different countries and serves 185 countries around the world.
The Dashboard (Control Panel)
The control panel of any service is one of the criteria that determine how easy or hard to deal with the services that the company offers. And in this comparison in particular.
The control panel dashboard is the main panel where you manage all your settings and services.
Let’s have a look at the DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode control panel interfaces to see which one is better designed and easy to use. Starting with DigitalOcean.
DigitalOcean Control Panel:
DigitalOcean has got a beautiful and clean design dashboard, At the left side of the dashboard, you would find the Main panel.
From the main panel, you can choose the option or service you want and in the middle of the interface, you can adjust the settings of the service you choose from the main panel.
For instance, you can see and monitor the performance of the servers you create. Also, you can scale up or down them from here.
Also, you can edit your account settings and the billing as well as delete, move, and backup your servers if you want to.
At the top right corner, you would find your account settings and information.
In general, the DigitalOcean dashboard is clean and easy to user-friendly, you won’t find any problem using it.
Vultr Control Panel:
Vultr has got a nice design and clean interface as well. Same as DigitalOcean, on the left side of the dashboard you would find the Main panel.
You would find the main settings on the main panel, while other options like deploying an instance are in the middle of the dashboard.
In the middle, you can process all the data you want when you choose something specific from the main panel. This makes it smoother and easier to handle even if you are not a tech professional.
It seems that Vultr’s interface is much smoother and easier to use than DigitalOcean, which makes it a little bit better than Digitalocean.
Linode Control Panel:
The control panel of Linode is also pretty cool, you got all the settings you need to manage your account in one place. Everything you want to create is a click away from you.
Linode’s dashboard is very simplified, which makes it easy to use even if you are not skilled in dealing with cloud hosting companies.
Once again, all the options are in the main panel on the left side of the dashboard page, and the other options are in the middle of the dashboard.
The middle space is for dealing with the options you choose from the main panel, you can edit the settings you choose from the main panel.
Interface Summary:
In terms of ease of use, we found that all three cloud computing services DigitalOcean, Vultr, And Linode are pretty easy to deal with.
It doesn’t require a highly knowledgeable developer to know exactly what’s going on with each of them.
You just need to spend some time and you are good to go. Also, if you know one of them, it’ll be easy for you to know the others.
The three of them are great, but for the sake of comparison, the cleanest and most beautiful dashboard from our perspective is Vultr.
Pricing
The price is always one of the most important factors that you should consider when looking for a web host. You should make sure that you are getting your money’s worth from your hosting provider.
However, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode pricing are close to each other, with no huge differences between them.
Anyway, I will give you the chance to see their actual prices in order for you to get a clear image of each of them.
Please note that cloud computing charges you only for the data and resources you consumed and no upfront payments.
That means if deploy a $10/month droplet for half a month and then delete it, you will only be charged for half of the month $5.
Also, if it's your first time signing up for any of these three web hosts, using our affiliate links will give you $100 free credit will be issued to your account after you sign up.DigitalOcean Pricing:
DigitalOcean provides many services such as Droplets, App platforms, Spaces Object Storage, Volumes, and more. Since we want to talk about cloud computing, we will focus on the Droplets pricing.
DigitalOcean offers three options you can choose to host your cloud server. These options are Regular Droplets with SSD, Premium Intel with NVMe SSD, and Premium AMD with NVMe SSD.
DigitalOcean recently increased its server pricing. The Regular plan that was $5/month now it’s $6/month. So there’s a new structure for the servers’ pricing.
DigitalOcean Regular Droplets Pricing:
In this plan, you get the basic Intel CPU and the regular SSD disk storage which is not bad for normal websites and blogs that don’t need the power of the new technology like Livestream and Development websites.
The cheapest Regular plan costs $4 per month with resources of 1 vCPU processor, 512 MB RAM memory, 500 GB Bandwidth, and 10 GB SSD storage space.
The 1 GB plan comes with 1 GB RAM memory, 1 vCPU processor, 1 TB Bandwidth, and 25 GB SSD storage space, this plan costs $5 per month.
DigitalOcean Premium Intel Droplets Pricing:
This plan is powered by the new Intel CPUs technology and the faster NVMe SSD disk storage. This plan is more powerful that the Regular plan.
The 1 GB plan on the Intel Premium option costs $7 per month with resources of 1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU processor, 1 TB Bandwidth, and 25 GB NVMe SSD disk space.
DigitalOcean Premium AMD Droplets Pricing:
This plan is powered by the new AMD CPUs technology and the faster NVMe SSD disk storage. Same as the Premium Intel droplets, the Premium AMD is more powerful that the Regular.
The 1 GB plan on the AMD Premium option costs $7 per month with resources of 1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU processor, 1 TB Bandwidth, and 25 GB NVMe SSD disk space.
Vultr Pricing:
Same as DigitalOcean, Vultr has many different services. From cloud computing to dedicated servers to block storage, Vultr gives you all the solutions you need.
The Vultr Cloud Compute provides four different cloud hosting options, they are Regular Performance, High-Frequency, Intel High Performance, and AMD High Performance.
Vultr pricing is a little bit cheaper than DigitalOcean, the 1 GB Regular plan starts at $5/month and the 1 GB Premium plans start at $6/month.
Vultr Regular Performance Pricing:
The Vultr Regular Performance is powered by previous-generation Intel CPUs and regular SSD, and it’s the cheapest plan.
Vultr Regular option has a plan that costs only $2.50/mo. That plan has all the resources you need for a small website except the IPv4 IP address.
It offers 10 GB SSD of storage space, 1 CPU, 500 MB of RAM, and 500 GB bandwidth. Yet, it doesn’t offer the 1-click WordPress installation.
The 1 GB plan costs $5 per month with resources of 1 GB RAM memory, 1 CPU Processor, 1 TB Bandwidth, and 25 GB SSD Storage Space.
Vultr High-Frequency Pricing:
The Vultr High Frequency is powered by 3GHz+ Intel Xeon CPUs and NVMe SSD. No AMD CPUs are included in this plan.
The 1 GB plan costs $6 per month with resources of 1 GB RAM memory, 1 Intel Xeon CPU Processor, 1 TB Bandwidth, and 32 GB NVMe SSD Storage Space.
Vultr High-Performance Pricing:
The Vultr High-Performance is powered by new generations of AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon CPUs and NVMe SSD.
Vultr High Performance offers two options inside it, the Intel High Performance and the AMD High Performance.
The 1 GB plan costs $6 per month with resources of 1 GB RAM memory, 1 AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon CPU Processor, 2 TB Bandwidth, and 25 GB NVMe SSD Storage Space.
Linode Pricing:
With many different services, Linode has made it easy for anyone to deploy all the services they need from one platform.
Linode cloud hosting provides Shared CPU ( cloud computing), a dedicated CPU environment, Block Storage, and more.
Linode doesn’t provide NVMe SSD-based storage on their servers, they only provide it on Block Storage.
Cloud computing pricing on Linode is actually the same as on Vultr Regular Performance. However, Linode doesn’t offer premium servers with NVMe disks.
The 1 GB Plan costs $5 per month with resources of 1 GB RAM memory, 25 GB SSD storage, 1 CPU processor, and 1 TB bandwidth.
Pricing Summary:
From the previous show, you can notice that the three DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode pricing plans are close to each other. In spite of that, there are some differences.
DigitalOcean costs more money than Vultr and Linode plans.
Linode doesn’t offer premium droplets with the new technology and NVMe SSD
Vultr, on the other hand, offers premium plans with more flexibility as well as the cheapest plan. Vultr is winning the pricing round
| Pricing Comparison | DigitalOcean | Vultr | Linode |
| Cheapest VPS plan | $4/500 MB RAM | $2.50/500 MB RAM | $5 for/1 GB RAM |
| 1 GB Plan | $6/month | $5/month | $5/month |
| 1 GB Premium | $7/month | $6/month | – |
| NVMe SSD | Yes | Yes | NO |
Performance
Web hosting is a crucial part of any website and it is essential that it provides good performance. It is important to make sure that your website or service is available when you need it.
Bad performance can lead to many issues. It can cause your website to be inaccessible by search engines, cause your site to be slow and unreliable, and even cause you to lose customers.
There are many factors that play roles in web hosting performance, but the major of these factors are Uptime, Loading Speed, and Server Location.
Uptime:
Uptime is an essential aspect, it’s one of the main factors that should you look at when you sign up for a web host.
With a poor uptime server, your website will go down and it can’t be accessible by visitors.
This issue will affect your website user experience, the visitors will leave your website and may never come back.
This will also affect your ranking on search results, Google will stop recommending your website to visitors if your website continues to show bad signals.
With that being said, let’s have a look at the uptime of the three web hosts DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode.
DigitalOcean Uptime:
DigitalOcean provides 100% network uptime and 99.9% general cloud uptime. If your network uptime is less than 100% or your general uptime is less than 99.99%, you will receive a refund to your account at the hourly rate incurred.
Vultr Uptime:
Vultr offers a 100% uptime guarantee on network and host node availability (servers). If Vultr fails to deliver a 100% uptime guarantee, your account will be eligible for credits based on any affected instances.
Linode Uptime:
Linode provides a 99.99% uptime guarantee on all Linode hardware, and on network connectivity. If your server on Linode is down for more than 0.01%, you may request a pro-rated credit for the downtime.
Loading Speed:
The Speed of your website loading page is a major factor for SEO and search engines. Same as uptime, loading speed affect your website user experience, as well as your Google ranking.
Faster websites tend to rank higher on search results than slower websites. That’s because Google won’t recommend slow websites to its users.
After searching and testing, again it appears that the three DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode are almost performing at the same speed the same.
However, almost doesn’t mean identical. On the Regular Plans tests, Linode came at first, it’s the fastest. Because Linode does not have Premium plans
On the other hand, When testing the Premium servers and the Regular Linode server, Vultr has come first and performed better.
Server Location (Datacenters):
The server location affects website performance and can make a big difference in the speed, response time, etc. It is crucial to have a good understanding of how to choose the best server location for your business.
The distance between your visitors and the server can have a significant impact on the speed of your website. So, try to create a server at the nearest data center to your audience.
DigitalOcean datacenters:
DigitalOcean has 13 data centers in 7 different countries:
- New York City, United States: Three data centers.
- San Francisco, United States: Three data centers.
- Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Two data centers.
- Singapore: One data center.
- London, United Kingdom: One data center.
- Frankfurt, Germany: One data center.
- Toronto, Canada: One data center.
- Bangalore, India: One data center.
Vultr server locations “datacenters”:
Vultr cloud computing has 28 data centers in 15 different countries around the world and this number is increasing.
The Vultr data centers are in:
- Silicon Valley – United States.
- Atlanta – United States.
- Los Angeles – United States.
- Seattle – United States.
- Dallas – United States.
- Chicago – United States.
- Honolulu – United States.
- New Jersey – United States.
- Miami – United States.
- Mexico City – Mexico.
- Toronto – Canada.
- São Paulo – Brazil.
- London – United Kingdom.
- Amsterdam – Netherlands.
- Stockholm – Sweden.
- Madrid – Spain.
- Warsaw – Poland.
- Paris – France.
- Frankfurt – Germany.
- Seoul – Korea.
- Tokyo – Japan.
- Delhi NCR – India.
- Bangalore – India.
- Mumbai – India.
- Singapore – Singapore.
- Melbourne – Australia
- Sydney – Australia
- Johannesburg- South Africa.
Linode server locations “cores”:
Linode has 11 data centers located in the US, Europe, and Asia you can choose from. that makes it easier for you to choose the nearest location to your website’s visitors.
WordPress Installation
WordPress is the simplest most popular beginner-friendly website builder tool. Among all websites on the internet, 43% of them were built and managed by WordPress. That’s due to its ease of use and flexibility.
The three cloud VPSs DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode have the WordPress application on their Marketplace with the 1-click WordPress installation.
So you can install WordPress on each of them within the process of creating the server with ease.
- On DigitalOcean it would be within installing your droplet. Create a droplet then choose the WordPress app from the Marketplace. Read how to install WordPress on DigitalOcean.
- On Vultr click on Instances and then deploy instance after that scroll down to Marketplace and select WordPress. Read how to install WordPress on Vultr.
- On Linode VPS click on Linodes the first choice of the main panel, then click on Create Linode, after that go to Marketplace to select WordPress. Read how to install WordPress on Linode.
This is the first part of installing WordPress on the server. The second part is configuring the WordPress on the server and adding a domain name and then installing an SSL certificate.
Marketplace
Are you a developer? If so, the application marketplace may concern you.
The Marketplace provides a collection of popular applications, software stacks, and operating systems that you can deploy to your servers.
Such as WordPress, you would find applications that you might use in the marketplace of any of the three of them.
The three hosts have almost every app you might need in their marketplace. So, no worries, sign up for what you love and you will find all the applications you want.
What Is The Best Cloud Host?
On the surface, the DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode seem to be similar to each other on many occasions, if you choose any of them, they will serve the purpose.
However, when we look at the analysis we did we find that Vultr tends to perform better in many aspects. So our pick for the best cloud hosting provider is Vultr.
| Comparison | DigitalOcean | Vultr | Linode |
| Ease of use | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| 1 GB Plan | $6/month | $5/month | $5/month |
| 1 GB Premium | $7/month | $6/month | – |
| Cheapest plan | $4/mo | $2.5/mo | $5/mo |
| NVMe | Yes | Yes | No |
| Uptime | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Uptime Guarantee | 99.99% | 100.00% | 99.99% |
| Speed | Fast | Fast | Fast |
| Data centers | 13 | 28 | 11 |
| Install WordPress | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Free credit | DigitalOcean $200 | Vultr $100 Credit | Linode $100 Credit |
