I was really close to becoming a Linode customer last week for several large boxes, but ended up buying hardware and self-hosting.<p>The cost to cut in an enterprise fiber link (1000/400) to our office was surprisingly low.<p>My experience trialling linode as a paying customer was really positive (VERY competitive price, great performance), only complaint being their NodeBalancer can’t automatically handle certificates like CF and AWS can.<p>Also, it needs to be mentioned because there’s a lot of negative in this thread: HUGE shout out to Linode for being massive community supporters and donating HEAPS of free compute to uni clubs and such, pretty much anyone with a charity certificate who asks for it. Fantastic company that’s easy to ‘just talk to people’ rather than trying to find the right support silo.
I think this is Akamai figuring out they need to address the self-serve market.<p>Akamai has 6x the edge network footprint of Cloudflare and has all the cool trendy stuff like edge workers, they just suck at selling to the developer.
As a long time Linode user, I hung in there through a lot of service issues and growing pains. Linode has always been just one of a handful of providers I have, and I figured at _some_ point, all of these issues will result in a solid platform. Well, over the last couple years, Linode HAS achieved this, and is now one of my most reliable platforms.<p>I also use Prolexic DDoS service from Akamai, which was a standalone company until 2014. Akamai bought them, and the service actually vastly improved, so let's hope that Linode + Akamai's size and buying power will result in something even better.
I think Linode is the only ad I’ve ever clicked on the internet.<p>Around 2003 they were advertising via static banner ads on sourceforge.net, and I remember the offer being great for the time. Root in a “VM” (it was user mode Linux in those days) for something like $15/mo. I hung out in their IRC channel with caker and the early crew. I remember them talking about unboxing and racking servers and what their DCs were like. Can you imagine just casually chatting with someone who has intimate knowledge of your EC2 machine and its network?! It was a great time.
I scored a free Xen VM when they were beta testing their transition and promptly had my first (and last so far!) experience getting a server hacked. Left it running with root ssh logins and a weak password.
I migrated to other hosting services before the scandals hit I think. I’m glad to only have great memories and wish them all the best!
I've been using Linode since the mid 2000s when Chris Aker, the owner and CEO, provided support on IRC ( OFTC: caker) and the company only had two or three staff.<p>Great to see how he built Linode organically to the scale it has reached. In the context of venture capital and Y-combinator its a good contrasting story on how successful a bootstrapped, patiently built, profitable sustainable business can become when the focus is on excellent (and personal) customer service.
Really happy for Linode. I cannot say enough good things about the quality of their products and support.<p>As a customer who's built significant value on their infrastructure, I'm a little bit worried about the impact this acquisition will have on their operations. I really hope it gives them the resources to improve on the same mission, and not the beginning of significant change!
I have a lot of infrastructure on Linode, and have been a customer for many years. I've been very happy with the price/performance, especially compared with large providers some of my customers use like Rackspace.<p>I hope that being part of a public company won't cause too much pressure to reduce services or raise prices.
I'm very disappointed at all the negativity here. I get it, I'm worried too. I <i>hate</i> the modern trend of the exit always being an acquisition. I hate that the big companies scoop up the good little companies and ruin them. I hate it all. I feel very jaded too, and I'm very worried about what this means too. I have significant investment running on linode and I don't want to have to move it, which also means paying more, and settling for less.<p>But that said, we are missing a <i>lot</i> of details. As worried as I am, I'm going to give a company who really deserves the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of the doubt.<p>I would really, really appreciate a blog post or announcement or something though from Linode that details what things are changing and when. I know you may not know yet, but when you know if you could share I would greatly appreciate it.
This worries me. I've been a happy Linode customer for a while. I've mostly only noticed Akamai when they were screwing something up for one of their customers. I try to be ready to migrate off of any service like this at the drop of a hat, but I suppose this is a good reminder to test my plans for getting off Linode, just in case.
This is an interesting mix. In my experience Linode has a good UX and is well targeted at SMEs, whereas I'm not sure anyone has bought an Akamai contract anywhere but a golf course, and it has a UX to match.<p>Is this Akamai trying to buy access to a market who would previously not even consider them, or is it Akamai trying to buy access to the more general cloud infrastructure market? If they're trying to do both I can't see it going down well.
Happy linode user since 2004 when I was 13 years old. Has always been my go-to for just having a linux vps running somewhere in the cloud. Really can't complain hope the acquisition doesn't change anything about how they operate.
I can't think of many cases where an acquisition served customers well. Often the distinctive things that make a company appealing are lost as costs are slashed, good staff flee and the parent tries to capture customers into their existing products and services.<p>My impression of Akamai was always if you have to ask the price then you can't afford it. It seems an odd match. I guess the thinking is that they both have to compete with AWS and provide a one stop shop which is probably true to some extent but certainly not for a customer like me.<p>I have been a small Linode customer off and on for over 15 years and in that time they have had ups and downs, made very public mistakes and learned from them. Overall they generally supplied a competitive product and decent customer service. So I hope this works out well for all involved. If not there is lots of competition still in this space.
I have been a Linode customer for most of their existence, and I mostly don't have to think about them. Which is awesome. I sure hope that doesn't change...
I love Linode. Strongly recommended.<p>For many years, I have run all my websites and services (back-ends for apps, etc.) on a few $5/month Nanodes.<p>For temporary/experimental stuff I sometimes use Vultr and Digital Ocean, but Linode's service and reliability is superior (especially versus Vultr). Linode is just top-notch.
How does DigitalOcean compare to Linode these days? One thing I noticed off the bat is that Linode still offers phone and email support, versus just a ticketing system interface.
From Linode blog:<p><pre><code> For the immediate future, we will continue to operate as we always have. Akamai has no intention of changing what has made us successful. This acquisition will propel us both forward — not take anything away. Linode will soon be able to call on the power of Akamai to offer entirely new products, services, expertise, locations, and scale, while Akamai will be able to tap into Linode’s deep expertise in compute, storage, and on-demand infrastructure-as-a-service.
</code></pre>
<a href="https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-and-akamai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-and-akamai/</a><p>I like Linode and been with them for ~5 years. Their pricing didn't change much (if at all) during that time but hosting landscape got more competitive since then. Hetzner and OVH offer a better value I believe. I hope Akamai's resources will help them to not lose in the long run.
Congrats Linode. I switched back to Linode after a few years on Digitalocean (I wanted the server to be located in my country and Linode offers that), I was really happy to see how much it has evolved since the last time I had used it circa 2013
Linode is a fairly underrated provider. Getting acquired will hopefully bring them more visibility.<p>For Akamai, I wonder if this acquisition will have a negative impact on their ability to work with other providers who are now competitors. Similar to how AWS has trouble signing clients in the retail industry.
awww, fuck.<p>I used Slicehost for years, but they got swallowed by Rackspace and became unusable. Linode has been my home since then. I have no positive experiences with small providers who get swallowed by corporate borgs. :(
Oh, snap. I am a longtime Linode customer.
Somehow I fell disturbed by this news. Is there a valuable alternative out there? Just in case something happens with pricing or other things.
You know what I mean.
I had a sour taste from what I remember being misleading communication around very serious control plane hacks of linode.<p>A lot of bitcoin theft in 2012 (maybe by their own staff?)<p>2013 some kind of cold fusion / HTP hack<p>Another CF / HTP hack here.<p>2014 brought the MySQL server no password stuff.<p>2015 ish some kind of total root compromise?<p>You can get a feel for all this here including the denials / lack of notification.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845985" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845985</a><p>Maybe 2016 same issue?<p><a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-passwords-after-suspected-hack/" rel="nofollow">https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-...</a><p>Not a company I'd put much actual production onto. Imagine if AWS had a hacker running around with total root access, able to reset MFA tokens to their own etc with no notice to customers. I'm not even sure such root access exists on AWS.
Congrats Linode. Been a user since they launched. Even the diehards (like me) have moved a lot to AWS and competitors. Lindode's biz feels stuck in the previous decade, and I think the $900MM purchase price reflects that. Hopefully the founders had a great exit and move on to create new amazing things! Best of luck to the Linode team.
I will continue to give them a chance. They have proven in the past to be reliable and even though once, the hardware I was on was physically damaged and a lot of data lost, there support has been rock solid the whole time.<p>Man I suck at typing positive reviews. Happy customer since 2012-03-13
Linode's been solid for me for 15 years, I only moved some projects to Hetzner for better pricing. Linode staff were always very helpful, nothing but positive experiences. Hope their support will remain great.
I think the only reason that I browsed this is that Linode hosts a mattermost instance of mine, I'm happy with them, and I don't want anything to change.
My Linode account has been active since 2010-02-15, so more than a decade now. They've been a very solid option to use all this time. Part of the reason I love them, beyond their great service and competitive pricing... is the fact that I've never had to think about it. Sometimes I may not log into my Linode account for 6 months or more.<p>Do they do a TON more stuff these days? Yes. But my standard bumpkin Linode instance keeps chugging along. Upgrade/replacement to new hardware? They handle it, I get alerts but otherwise I don't need to take action.<p>I'm happy for them that they got bought, because it brings (hopefully) a lot of value to all those people who worked so hard to get to this point in time. However as a customer I worry, of course I worry. Clearly Akamai wants to be the next big cloud, not just a CDN. Linode wants to be that next big cloud too. So it's a great fit. But will that push to The Next Big Thing kill off what made them great for the little guys? Maybe.<p>It'll still be good for their business, just bad for me.
I really hope Linode stays available self-serve, even if it transitions to an Akamai hostname for server management. The current Akamai availability is super limited and you'll often need to give them a call if you want to run any regular traffic through them or use a product not included in the free trial of their services.
f. I've been using Linode since before "cloud" became a buzzword. I'm sure it's just a matter of time until the screws get turned. That seems to be the economic environment we're currently in, too.<p>Maybe Akamai will stop blocking Linode IPs for their firewall snake oil? One can dream.
Lots of comments on how people now need to move off Linode, but I cannot imagine Akamai bought this to kill it off. It actually makes me happy as Akamai is a very professional company with a lot of networking talent. I hope they level up Linode while keeping the best parts.
Using Linode since it started till today, it's stable and great and its support is also good(only used it twice out of ~20 years), but it kind of got overshadowed by digitalocean.<p>All the best to Linode, I will keep using it unless something changed dramatically.
Goddamnit. I was already having a bad day.<p>I've run jsonip.com off of linode for over a decade. They've been <i>incredibly</i> reliable as a hosting service.<p>I don't have any experience with Akamai, but I generally find acquisitions are the death of any good service.<p>Goddamn it.
Maybe this one will be different but usually this kind of acquisition marks the peak of the company and from them on things will go downhill while the acquiring company absorbs them and enterprisifies them.
I have always had question in my mind how are Linode going to keep up with the investment required and competition from DO and Vultr which has more resources backing. It isn't just the cost in infrastructure any more. But all the software services and features from managed DB, K8s and different type of storage. Bare Metal is still coming soon.<p>I also hope this opens up Akamai CDN / DDoS access to consumers rather than Enterprise. Not that it matter as much anymore in the era of Cloudflare.<p>Hopefully this gives enough resources for Linode to continue and grow.
Been a Linode customer for around 10 years. Most of the time has been very smooth. Easy to use, and easy on the wallet. Kind of the opposite of the AWS policy of sneaking up, grabbing you by the balls, and yanking.<p>I feel bad for their customer support today. They have kind of trained people to go ahead and ask questions by being responsive. The number of dumb questions no one really knows the answer to will be at an all time high today.<p>Anyway congrats to Aker and other staff, hope they can all retire comfortably or take a long vacation if they want.
I have fond memories talking to Linode customer service when I was still a noob sysadmin.<p>They were extremely helpful and polite. I hope that all the employees get good kickbacks from the sale.
Huh, is this a rare win for Philly tech?<p>(Super open to being corrected here, just always found them interesting to be in Philly since I don't know of many tech co's there)
Love Linode, been a customer for years. The only support ticket I had to file was because of a copy/paste error on my end and support helped me resolve it quickly and effortlessly. Great performance and cost. Was really a no brainer when AWS wouldn't stop billing me for a service I shut down and I couldn't get through to a human.
Been using Linode since 2019. Service worked as expected (worked well), and I hope that won't change after this. If I had to move, I'd have to go through the pain of setting up my website(s) again, but at least I have backups, so it's just a matter of time spent getting set up again..
Really hope Akamai don't mess up Linode - I'm a long time happy customer of theirs. I hope this is positive for their employees, who made it what it is, too.<p>I don't have a lot of use for it, but I think their load balancer could be better, so hopefully this will happen now.
Great news for the Linode team. Another isolated silo for Akamai. Honestly the way Akamai pieces together product offerings through acquisitions to compete has made it very difficult to leverage their portfolio without hiring consulting firm to integrate a solution.
What a coincidence that Cloudflare today announced their switch from rCaptcha to hCaptcha. Now that I can assure people accessing my service that they won't get Googled, I have a good reason to switch from Linode VPN VPS to CF Argo tunnel.
As usual, a company provided good service at low price, was people friendly, supported educational and open source uses and... got acquired by an old, high friction, bloated, expensive predatory monster.
If you work at Linode now is time to get the hell out. 250+ employees and barely anything to show for it. You fell behind DO and Vultr and caker took the easy way out. Follow your customers and leave.
Linode IRC folks taught me a bunch of linux many years ago on their channel. I was astounded by their patience towards my complete stupidity. Thank you Linode team & users, owe you a fair bit!
I can’t wait until I can just setup a database, nodes and it will just handle auto scaling, maintenance and tuning by itself - on my own hardware.<p>It’s crazy how much you need to know to do the above.<p>Akamai - make it happen!
Linode holds a special place in my experience. I switched to DigitalOcean for better sbapshotting and even cheaper cheap vps'es, but I only have very good memories of Linode.
Linode was my first forayed to VPS for nearly 2 years and we move to UpCloud which has Singapore region and it claimed to offer server redundancy without additional costs.
One dying company absorbing another dying company.<p>Linode has really gone down the tubes. Just try to find out what the prices are for their services. Or how to actually <i>use</i> any of the services they provide besides a VM instance. Can you find the magical documentation site without Google? I couldn't. And pricing for some services requires you to sign up for an account and attempt to deploy the service, or you have to go through a "professional services" team for a "quote".<p>DigitalOcean and AWS don't have a problem directing users toward product information or docs, and they provide a simple web UI to use all their services. But Linode can't seem to grasp it, after <i>years</i> of trying to roll out a new web UI. Rather than provide you simple managed services wrapped around specific technology, they provide "scripts" you can execute as a single VM boots up. They can't even show you how to create a VPC without burying it 4 levels deep in a drop-down menu of a specific linode created in a specific region.<p>I got so fed up with it that I moved my one remaining linode off to DO. Not only do they have more services in more regions, but I can actually find the information I need to make changes.