Rackspace vs Amazon EC2 vs Linode vs DigitalOcean vs SoftLayer

We Have Compared the Pricing of The Major Cloud Computing IaaS Providers in this guide, i.e. Rackspace vs Amazon EC2 vs Linode vs DigitalOcean vs SoftLayer. Two major things to consider – Level of Server Management and the Bandwidth Pricing Flaw – Cloud Computing pricing.

Rackspace vs Amazon EC2 vs Linode vs DigitalOcean vs SoftLayer

Keep in mind, there are several factors which needed to be considered, which are commonly not mentioned by usual ordinary blogs and forums. Data Portability is a big point to consider, as well as the hardware, cloud computing software; needless to say – the virtualization software. There might be bundled “freebies”, which are not directly charged but the pricing might get increased a bit to compensate the running cost of the freebies – none gives anything for 100% free.

If you can not bear the cost and want something which demands no understanding, rely us; it is better to use the services which are popular for many years – BlueHost, HostGator etc. Cloud IaaS actually demands a Cloud Architect to review the setup, it has difference with a typical old VPS due to complicated backend.

Rackspace, without any doubt is the best among all and next will be Digital Ocean for current bill < 800 USD / mo. For higher investment per month, it demands custom review.

Rackspace vs Amazon EC2 vs Linode vs DigitalOcean vs SoftLayer : Comparison

Rackspace has no unmanaged Hosting. So, direct comparison is not possible – $50 per month is the minimum charge for managed level.

Service Lever Agreement is the best. If you need a simple but reliable hosting within $150 per month charge, Rackspace Cloud Sites is the best. Cloud Sites is not server, it is Application PaaS (aPaaS).

We would rate RedHat OpenShift PaaS to be the best, if they can solve the issue with native internal bare domain pointing. RedHat OpenShift PaaS has no IP, but Rackspace Cloud Sites has IP. So, RedHat OpenShift PaaS goes towards the developers. RedHat OpenShift possibly has not much target towards the mass consumer market.

Pricing of Rackspace

Unless you are an old client or getting server as resold product, $50 per month is constant charge. 512MB instance is honestly unusable at SSH from India, Performance 1, One GB PVHVM server is minimum standard for practical usage. Rackspace has no charge for Internal data usage ( that is network over Private IP, known as ServiceNet ). Rackspace has own mirror for the updates. So, updates are actually not charged for bandwidth. Only SSH consumes very low outbound bandwidth. So, if you have two server setup with one database server and one web server, except the charge of computing, there is no bandwidth charge for the database server – charge for ServiceNet is fully free. CloudDNS, CloudQueue, e-Mail hosting are freebies. Tech support is excellent. $23 / month is the charge for 1 GB instance excluding the charge of bandwidth. So, if we run an 1 GB instance as database server with ServiceNet, the charge will be $23 / month. Minimum monthly charge for 512MB is $16 / month.

MailGun is Whitelisted Email service. There are stuffs which others do not disclose. Whitelisted Email service means Email Service like Google Apps. Email will not go to spam folder. Your service will not be discontinued without notice being served, even if you fail to pay for technical reason. Many opens an account, use a huge resource and fly away. If you never need or rarely need to talk with Billing, Rackspace is the best. We have seen, continuation of such conversation, actually returns again the polite language.

This is the choice for hosting a good website. Hosting a personal website will suck, $30 / month average charge is too much for a profile website (we are considering an 1 GB P1 device).

Unofficially, if you want Rackspace, you can talk with us. Unofficially – because we are yet not Partner.

Pricing of Amazon

Actually one can not compare EC2 directly. They have odd calculation of RAM. On Amazon EC2, Medium means 3.75 GB RAM with 1 VCPU and Large means 7.5 GB RAM with 2 VCPU. Micro instance (which is given for free for one year) is closer to Rackspace’s 512MB instance. It actually sucks. $87.84 / month is the charge for medium instance.

Support of Amazon for higher plan is not bad, but not as good as Rackspace. Amazon has everything like Rackspace but lacks a simply understandable user interface.

Pricing of DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean, purely runs on a Community based model. There is practically no personalized free support over chat or phone. Referral gives virtual money to account. DigitalOcean will get a biased rating because of running instance almost free of cost for technology blogs – if 5-6 visitors signup per month, charge becomes virtually free ($25 in account credit per new client!) DigitalOcean has become the worlds fastest growing cloud hosting service.

Oddly, 512MB instance (NYC) of DigitalOcean is very fast on SSH. Raw infrastructure has no difference with the other two. For 512MB, 1GB instances, this is a great service. SSD based storage is not very clear matter. Only known thing about DigitalOcean is that – they uses KVM Virtualization. DigitalOcean is really unreliable for Data Safety and backup. They seem to offer weekly auto-backup which is optional and costs 20% of the monthly server cost ( a $5 server if backed up costs $1 extra per month). You possibly can not take a backup of the server image. DigitalOcean possibly does not have a SAN. They use local storage in RAID 5 as far our knowledge goes. If your website get deleted, they will give you $50. Quite funny, they has no money back warranty based on SLA!

It is better for opening a small blog, personal blog etc. unless you install OpenStack Nova or Ubuntu’s Metal as a Service on DigitalOcean to have own setup. The storage faster building of 512MB instance and faster behavior, arises the question, “How it is possible?”. There is no answer. You know very well, on your own computer, a 512MB CLI will not give huge performance. They possibly has some way to make it faster. Here is the history of DigitalOcean from DigitalOcean :

http://trends.netcraft.com/www.digitalocean.com

We can not really recommend DigitalOcean for a serious websites for many reasons from feedback on Internet. DigitalOcean pays $200 per article writing which competes on SERP with professional blogs who frankly running only for the content. We discourage to use DigitalOcean for moral reasons. If you use DigitalOcean for saving small money, you are killing an old technology blog on SERP which used to pay hosting fees for publication of Linux guides. Their writers do not write the articles, unlike even Hostgator, who has no own datacenter!

digitalocean.com is not DMOZ listed among all the web hosts’ name written here.

Pricing of Linode

Linode cost the same like DigitalOcean – $10/month for 1 GB RAM. 2 TB data usage is free. They are running business since 2003 and many resellers who provides “Managed WordPress” uses Linode as backend.

Pricing of SoftLayer

SoftLayer means IBM. SoftLayer 1GB virtual cloud server costs $ 27 / month. SoftLayer is obviously dependable and has all the needed services. IBM clearly said, they have no target to make the price to go very low. We have no experience with SoftLayer Virtual Servers.

Rackspace vs Amazon EC2 vs Linode vs DigitalOcean vs SoftLayer : Conclusion

It is probably better to choose Rackspace or Amazon EC2 or SoftLayer for running serious websites. They perform as good as dedicated server instances. They are well known brand and running hosting business for many years. Rackspace sounds to cost more, but the features makes it the best. Amazon EC2 at high end pricing, actually outperforms many in real World. Rackspace runs fully OpenSource software and practically there is nothing which is not available. But, as we have pointed, running only a personal website on Rackspace is not practical. You can use OctoPress on Cloud Files instead of server for personal websites. A 512MB server will work fine for DNS stuffs.

Most bigger blogs use either Amazon or Rackspace or MediaTemplate. After these three, the last option is own datacenter. Pricing including all paid services is actually very close to each other.