DigitalOcean vs Linode Introduction

DigitalOcean and Linode are two of the most popular cloud providers who had impressive growth in recent years. But which one is better? Let’s have a look at a DigitalOcean vs Linode head-to-head comparison.

In order to stand out, both providers concentrate on three selling points very appreciated by developers: high-performance virtual servers, low as possible prices and simplicity.

DigitalOcean was founded in 2011 while Linode is on the market since 2003.

We will move further by comparing the pricing, locations, and features offered by DigitalOcean and Linode.

Compute Pricing

Both providers have very similar pricing. The cheapest cloud instance starts at 5$/month and offers the same resources. DigitalOcean Compute Pricing can be found here, while Linode Compute Pricing is available here.

Conclusion: No notable difference between the two providers.

Storage Pricing

DigitalOcean has Spaces Object Storage and Block Storage while Linode has Object Storage and Block Storage. Both providers are offering the same price for the services. A detail to mention is that DigitalOcean’s Block Storage limit is 16TB while Linode’s Block Storage limit is 10TB.

Conclusion: DigitalOcean has a small advantage over Linode because the Block Storage can be expanded up to 16TB, instead of 10TB.

Managed Databases

In 2019, DigitalOcean expanded its products portfolio by introducing the Managed Databases service. It has support for MySQL, Redis, and PostgreSQL. On the other side, Linode does not offer a similar service.

Conclusion: DigitalOcean has a clear advantage, especially if you have more complex applications that require a managed database.

Data Center Locations

At the moment, DigitalOcean is serving its customers from 12 data centers located in 7 countries all around the world.

On the other side, Linode has a small disadvantage by having one location less but is present in Japan and Australia, where DigitalOcean does not have any datacenters.



Conclusion: No significant difference between the two providers. DigitalOcean has a small advantage by offering one more datacenter and being present in the Netherlands, but Linode has data centers in two countries in which DigitalOcean hasn’t.

DigitalOcean vs Linode Overall Conclusion

Both DigitalOcean and Linode are doing a great job at creating cloud solutions loved by developers. They are offering easy to use products with a clean user interface and a very good price/quality.

As a conclusion for the DigitalOcean vs Linode comparison, DigitalOcean has an advantage by offering more services at the same competitive price as Linode.

As you probably already know, DigitalOcean backups run once per week. In case this is not frequently enough for you, I will show you the simplest, cheapest and most flexible way to create Daily DigitalOcean backups using Weap.io

1. Create a Weap.io account

First of all, go to the Weap.io Registration page and sing up for a new account. You only need an email address and 30 seconds. If you want to be even quicker, you can sign up by using your Github account.

2. Connect Your DigitalOcean account

After that, you have to connect the DigitalOcean account you want to back-up using Weap.

To do so, you must click Add account, type a name for your account and click Save.

After clicking Save, You will be redirected to DigitalOcean where you have to allow access to your DigitalOcean account for Weap.io

3. Start backing-up your Droplets and Volumes

After connecting and synchronizing your DigitalOcean account, you will see your Droplets and Volumes (we simply call them Cloudlets) in the Weap dashboard.

Now, you can use the default backup settings or change them based on your needs. Just go to the cloudlet page to see and change the frequency and retention settings.

You can even choose to replicate your snapshots in multiple regions at no extra cost.

Conclusion

Using Weap.io, your DigitalOcean Droplets and Volumes are safely backed-up more frequently, allowing you to easily recover your data in case of an accident.

Remember that your snapshots are kept safe and secure, directly inside the DigitalOcean infrastructure. DigitalOcean is charging 0.05$ per GB, per month.

DigitalOcean provides two ways for archiving a Droplet or Volume at a point in time: backups and snapshots. But what are exactly the differences between the two types of images? Let’s see.

DigitalOcean backups

A DigitalOcean backup is a crash-consistent, point in time capture of your Droplet or Volume which can be used to create a new Droplet or restore an existing one to the backup state.

A crash-consistent backup allows the system to capture all of the data exactly as it was at a single point in time on the disk. This means that the data is backed up in a consistent state.

Once enabled, DigitalOcean backups automatically occur once per week with a cost of 20% of the Droplet price and are retained for 4 weeks. You can not replicate them in multiple regions.

An important thing to remember is that when a Droplet is deleted, all associated backups will also be deleted.

DigitalOcean snapshots

A DigitalOcean snapshot is also a crash-consistent, point in time capture of a Droplet or Volume, but with more flexibility.

They have to be manually created, can be replicated in multiple DigitalOcean regions (for Droplets only) and are not deleted when the Droplet or Volume is deleted.

Instead of paying 20% of the Droplet price, you pay 0.05$ per GB per month. The price is based on the size of the snapshot, not the size of the filesystem being saved.

Another important thing to remember is that there is no additional charge for making a snapshot available in multiple regions, but you have to manually trigger the replication.

Automated backup snapshots using Weap.io

Weap.io is using the flexibility of the snapshots to offer the best backup solution for your DigitalOcean Droplets and Volumes.

It allows you to schedule how often a snapshot should be created, for how long it should be kept and in which regions to be replicated.
Give it a try now.

The problem

DigitalOcean is a great cloud provider, but has one small problem: you only have weekly backups for your Droplets.

You can enable the weekly backups for each Droplet at a cost of 20% of the Droplet price per month. For some people weekly backups of their Droplets are not enough.

Digging deeper

Luckily, beside bakups, DigitalOcean also has Snapshots. Under the hood, a snapshot is almost identical to a backup, but there are some key differences:

• instead of paying 20% of the Droplet price, you pay 0.05$ per GB per month
• they are not automatically created once per week, but you have to manually trigger the creation event
• when the Droplet is deleted, the backups are also deleted. Opposite, snapshots are kept even if the Droplet is deleted
• a snapshot can be stored in multiple regions at no extra cost
  

Solution

Weap.io allows you to schedule more frequent backups of your Droplets and Volumes. Under the hood, all the backups are actually DigitalOcean Snapshots.

Beside scheduling the frequency, you can also decide how long a snapshot should be kept.

For example, you can schedule a backup to be created daily and retain the last 5 daily backups, the last 4 weekly and the last 3 monthly backups.
Additionally, you can select in which DigitalOcean regions the snapshots should be replicated.

For each snapshot, DigitalOcean charges you 0.05$ per month per GB. There is no extra charge for replicating the snapshots in up to 10 DigitalOncean regions.