DO has really benefitted from Linode stalling over the past few years. I admire Linode for remaining a bootstrapped business but it feels as though the owners lost their fighting spirit and energy... Perhaps because the small pool of Linode owners felt they made enough money already.
DOs announment talks about a storage product, which is strategically important and crucially something Linode has sorely needed for a long time. And yet the biggest development in recent years at Linode has been a proprietary stats and monitoring system built as an upsell, which doesn't really do anything distinctive that Nagios or another package couldn't provide.
Instead Linode is now switching their entire platform from Xen to KVM, a curious move which will create risk and cost velocity that could have been spent on product development.
I have been a huge supporter of Linode over the years, and the startup I co-founded is one of their biggest customers, but at this point DO seems like the winning horse to back.
I'm not saying you're wrong but I disagree from my own POV. It's a common play in the hosting business to grow big quickly then sell out to a more enterprisey company (as happened with EV1Servers, Softlayer, Heroku) and if DO is taking such large amounts of funding, something will have to happen (IPO, acquisition, etc) and some companies don't make the transition well (I'm not saying DO wouldn't, but you never know).
Linode, on the other hand, can remain a company focused on just being a long term business forever. They might move a little more conservatively, but they have owners with skin in the game and customers to keep happy. I use both DO and Linode, but Linode for my most critical stuff simply because I "feel" they're more likely to remain basically the same in 5 years' time and I value that consistency as a business.
I think DO is superb, I have great admiration for them and I recommend them a lot, but I also feel they're the riskier horse to back even if the potential upside is so much greater.
For all the money Linode has on hand, and the size of their technical team, it's absolutely insulting they haven't made any tangible improvement to their management front-end in at least five years, if not more.
The way it's behaving it's as if it was acquired and kept on life-support.
Funny... I remember when Linode first became really popular, it was right around the time Slicehost got bought (and subsequently shut down by) Rackspace. A lot of people moved over to Linode because Slicehost was no more (or when the writing was on the wall that it would soon become no more).
So perhaps you're correct that lack of funding is making Linode lazy now, but that doesn't mean that getting bought or accepting a bunch of money would solve the problem.
When people ask, "Why does HN/the tech industry pay so much attention to the companies that are raising money?" I'll point them to this.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with bootstrapping and making a good living, but the stuff that goes big and wants to scale quickly usually has to raise a bunch of money to get there.
fun fact about linode: if it says automatic backups are on in your control panel, they can still be off on linode's end. I went to go recover from a recent snapshot, only to find our latest backup was 11 months ago. That it would be "on" on our end, and be broken for 11 months for a service i'm not supposed to have to think about, that really blew me away. But, to their credit, DO does not offer the same level of backups.
I used digital ocean for a while. My experience was bad reliability and random technical issues. I had various very experience ops people verify with me that it wasn't an issue I introduced into the systems running.
I went back to dedicated servers at a smallish provider and forgot how nice it can be to not have all the cloud virtualization stuff get in the way. It's just too fragmented among providers in the way they setup for me to use the service and not have a fear of lockin. Does it take me 3 or 4 days to get new boxes? Yes. Is it causing a massive headache for me? No, because I plan things and order them ahead of time.
Just my 2 cents, I know others who use DO and love it.
Same experience here. A few of my developers migrated our servers to DO 2 years ago to "save" a few hundred dollars. Turns out DO has planned downtime every other month and its cost us 100x more in staff and headache dealing with them. You can't run a SaaS or anything that requires uptime reliability (ie, any sizable business) . I've transferred our main site back to AWS. Also AWS dedicated pricing is now almost the same as DO, and much more reliable.
But congrats to the DO team. They will only get better.
I wonder if the this pushes there valuation over 1B, if so I think that means that Techstars is the first accelerator outside of YC to produce a unicorn.
Personally I hope so, Digital Ocean is a great product and I think one of the really smart things they did was be generous with there free credits as it was at least a great way for me to get on there platform and later on drop a fair amount into hosting with them.
Is unicorn just a billion dollar non-public startup? Isn't there some other magic sauce required like supernormal margins or superfew employees or exploiting toothless regulations?
DO seems to be almost a too straight forward business model (buy servers, rent servers in sub-units) to be considered in the modern startup pool of wishful thinking. I mean, it's not like they're an iPhone app for renting other people's idle server space on demand. Now that would be a game changer.
Probably not. Their previous round was $37.2m on a $153m post, so about 25% equity. Hosting is very low margin, so valuations trend lower than other businesses.
I would say $500m valuation, tops. Most likely <$400m.
I've got two droplets now, one for email/owncloud and another for personal projects with automated backups. It's pretty easy to use, but I worry I don't have the sysadmin chops to keep it secure.
Edit: I followed tutorials on auto-updating packages through cron, securing ssh, and setting up ufw for only services needed when I set it up. It's been about 2 years now so maybe I shouldn't worry.
I've been with many VPS providers: KnownHost, RackSpace Cloud, OVH, Linode, etccc and DO has been a pleasure to work with because of all the integrations and tooling it has due to the increasing popularity/community.
I think this is a great step for a transition from a "developers cloud" to a "production cloud". I hope they continue to go in the same direction and soon offer multi-container blueprints as easy to deploy as their pre-built images.
My only question, is the investment rounds the new form of private equity bubble fixing? How diversified are these investments and how does the interoperations of a company get changes to meet the revenue influx to ROI? I never really got this jist and how culture DOES change by these rounds. The pitches must damn near printing money kind of stuff made of magic Mike XXL and pixie dust to stick.
> The $83 million is going directly into growing our team and expanding our product offerings with networking and storage features.
Great to hear. Real private networking, object/shared storage and most importantly HA (IP failover/load balancing) is all DO is missing to start really competing with AWS for "big business".
I don't think HA is really on the needed list, seeing as you can roll your own load balancer in 5 minutes using provided tutorials. I mean I guess they could make an image for it to make it a little easier.. The AWS elastic load balancer is really nothing fancy.
Real private networking and object shared storage are both huge for sure though.
> expanding our product offerings with networking and storage features
I'm so excited for this. I'd previously commented about how the lack of non-SSD storage meant I had to screw around with S3 when I really just wanted to keep everything on DO.
Great company. Been with them for two years now, and couldn't be happier. Combined with Cloud66 I worry less about deployments and servers and backups, and more about just getting the code out.
I am also curious about this. The fact that Vultr accepts Bitcoin as payment further piques my interest. Can anyone shed some light on their performance and convenience vs. DigitalOcean?
I have, with absolutely zero problems. I recommend them often. Not sure I'd trust them with PCI compliance requirements or something that heavy but I'd certainly use them for commodity VPSes over many others. They seem to offer a lot better performance/cost than DO.
Vultr is a brand of this company -- https://www.choopa.com -- and they've been around for a while.
I've used them and love them. I did some benchmarks a while ago (standard unixbench and such) and they outperformed DO on every metric. The extra features they have (particularly custom ISOs) are also really nice.
Definitely recommend them, although I use DO exclusively for the Github student credit.
I'm a heavy Linode, DO and Vultr user. All three are great (with Linode being my preferred choice if cost isn't the overriding factor).
I've got Vultr instances in all of their EU locations and haven't had any issues (connectivity wise or uptime wise). One note for Vultr: new accounts are limited to max 5 VPS instances by default until you open a support ticket and request the limit be raised (which they were happy to do, at least for me).
I've switched from DO to Vultr back when DO did not offer FreeBSD and DO's SFO network was pretty bad. I'm back on DO now because I've got my hands on some credits, but I would switch back to Vultr when I run out. DO's SFO network has improved I think, but for the $5 plan you get 50% more memory at Vultr (512mb vs 768mb).
I've used them. Their control panel is not as pretty, and their community is not as large. But the product is arguably better, they offer things that DO doesn't offer like DYO ISO, daily backups for the same cost as DO's weekly (seriously DO, only weekly backups???), and a ton more.
Their ANTISPAM policy is draconian, but I like their interface. I like that root passwords are in the web interface instead of going through email. Finally, their presence in more datacenters is useful for someone in the middle of the country.
I have, I found their Sydney instances to lag for seconds at a time, completely randomly, while SSH'd in (I also live in Sydney, so it's not distance). I now have an instance with Digital Ocean in Singapore and I much prefer it.
I have used them for a side project, no issues.
The big reason for me moving from DO to them that I didn't see mentioned is because they have actual private networking.
And also the option for servers with HDD instead of SSD.
I've been using RackSpace for couple years before moving to DigitalOcean, I've had a good experience with Rackspace when I started but my bills kept growing and server started to have constant issues every now and then, so I've decided to move to DigitalOcean couple years ago. My traffic since then grew quite a lot from 100K/month to around 1 million visitors/month and my bills from DigitalOcean are still not much higher than they used to be at the later stages on RackSpace, and performance is much better for me with DigitalOcean.
The only thing I dont like about DigitalOcean droplets is the requirement to shut off the server before resizing, Rackspace allowed me to do it without a need to shut it off.
Slightly offtopic, but I am curious if anyone has any insights into the legal side of hosting profit seeking services on top of VPS's in general. Is the boilerplate contract(s)/eula/tos good enough generally or do you seek to actually make changes to a custom one?
What about hosting websites vs reselling access for some other purpose (eg. similar to game hosting services that allow full customer control of the instance?)
It seems to me like there is a lot of room for a tool that can spin up an instance over multiple VPS providers, because sometimes one will have a colo close to where you want and sometimes another will.
Anyone aware of comprehensive location based benchmarking of all the VPS's?
I'm a novice/intermediate programmer, and when I knew nothing about what VPS even was I started using Linode(due to many great recommendations).
Linode is a great service, but recently I've switched to DO and I like it so much more. As a person who just needs a simple and straightforward way to put several django projects online - DO offers me a simple and beautiful interface, cheaper prices, and a lot of great and extremely useful tutorials.
It is much nicer to use and a droplet price starts from $5/mo, which is freakin' awesome, and all I need from VPS service at this point.
hm. Interesting. From what I know of the industry, their size and pricing, I would have thought they would be profitable enough that raising this sort of money wouldn't be particularly interesting.
There are many reasons to raise money. They may be operating at a loss but with growth in recurring revenue such that they expect to become profitable in a few years. But I wouldn't be surprised if they are raising this money to fuel an already growing fire, either by enhanced sales teams or even building out new capital projects that will open new revenue channels or create barriers to future competition.
[+] [-] dotBen|10 years ago|reply
DOs announment talks about a storage product, which is strategically important and crucially something Linode has sorely needed for a long time. And yet the biggest development in recent years at Linode has been a proprietary stats and monitoring system built as an upsell, which doesn't really do anything distinctive that Nagios or another package couldn't provide.
Instead Linode is now switching their entire platform from Xen to KVM, a curious move which will create risk and cost velocity that could have been spent on product development.
I have been a huge supporter of Linode over the years, and the startup I co-founded is one of their biggest customers, but at this point DO seems like the winning horse to back.
[+] [-] petercooper|10 years ago|reply
Linode, on the other hand, can remain a company focused on just being a long term business forever. They might move a little more conservatively, but they have owners with skin in the game and customers to keep happy. I use both DO and Linode, but Linode for my most critical stuff simply because I "feel" they're more likely to remain basically the same in 5 years' time and I value that consistency as a business.
I think DO is superb, I have great admiration for them and I recommend them a lot, but I also feel they're the riskier horse to back even if the potential upside is so much greater.
[+] [-] astrodust|10 years ago|reply
The way it's behaving it's as if it was acquired and kept on life-support.
[+] [-] EugeneOZ|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanlev|10 years ago|reply
So perhaps you're correct that lack of funding is making Linode lazy now, but that doesn't mean that getting bought or accepting a bunch of money would solve the problem.
Side note: the original slicehost founders grew to regret their decision of selling to Rackspace, see: http://37signals.com/founderstories/slicehost
[+] [-] austenallred|10 years ago|reply
There's absolutely nothing wrong with bootstrapping and making a good living, but the stuff that goes big and wants to scale quickly usually has to raise a bunch of money to get there.
[+] [-] meesterdude|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gukov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jebblue|10 years ago|reply
>> And yet the biggest development in recent years at Linode has been a proprietary stats and monitoring system
>> Linode is now switching their entire platform from Xen to KVM, a curious move which will create risk
>> I have been a huge supporter of Linode over the years
Uh huh, right.
[+] [-] chrismarlow9|10 years ago|reply
I went back to dedicated servers at a smallish provider and forgot how nice it can be to not have all the cloud virtualization stuff get in the way. It's just too fragmented among providers in the way they setup for me to use the service and not have a fear of lockin. Does it take me 3 or 4 days to get new boxes? Yes. Is it causing a massive headache for me? No, because I plan things and order them ahead of time.
Just my 2 cents, I know others who use DO and love it.
[+] [-] wooyi|10 years ago|reply
But congrats to the DO team. They will only get better.
[+] [-] stephen-mw|10 years ago|reply
There's no reason to fear virtualization, and the automation is definitely one of the best aspects of running in a major cloud.
[+] [-] jdoss|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icpmacdo|10 years ago|reply
Personally I hope so, Digital Ocean is a great product and I think one of the really smart things they did was be generous with there free credits as it was at least a great way for me to get on there platform and later on drop a fair amount into hosting with them.
[+] [-] seiji|10 years ago|reply
DO seems to be almost a too straight forward business model (buy servers, rent servers in sub-units) to be considered in the modern startup pool of wishful thinking. I mean, it's not like they're an iPhone app for renting other people's idle server space on demand. Now that would be a game changer.
[+] [-] timdorr|10 years ago|reply
I would say $500m valuation, tops. Most likely <$400m.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] buckbova|10 years ago|reply
Edit: I followed tutorials on auto-updating packages through cron, securing ssh, and setting up ufw for only services needed when I set it up. It's been about 2 years now so maybe I shouldn't worry.
[+] [-] joeyspn|10 years ago|reply
I think this is a great step for a transition from a "developers cloud" to a "production cloud". I hope they continue to go in the same direction and soon offer multi-container blueprints as easy to deploy as their pre-built images.
0.02
[+] [-] NiftyFifty|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vruiz|10 years ago|reply
Great to hear. Real private networking, object/shared storage and most importantly HA (IP failover/load balancing) is all DO is missing to start really competing with AWS for "big business".
[+] [-] brianwawok|10 years ago|reply
Real private networking and object shared storage are both huge for sure though.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 3pt14159|10 years ago|reply
I'm so excited for this. I'd previously commented about how the lack of non-SSD storage meant I had to screw around with S3 when I really just wanted to keep everything on DO.
Great company. Been with them for two years now, and couldn't be happier. Combined with Cloud66 I worry less about deployments and servers and backups, and more about just getting the code out.
[+] [-] alberth|10 years ago|reply
I ask because they have all the same features as DO + way more (e.g. dedicated hosting w/ same great panel, BYO ISO, etc).
[+] [-] username|10 years ago|reply
Edit: Found this http://blog.due.io/2014/linode-digitalocean-and-vultr-compar..., which seems to portray it quite favorably.
[+] [-] api|10 years ago|reply
Vultr is a brand of this company -- https://www.choopa.com -- and they've been around for a while.
[+] [-] Veratyr|10 years ago|reply
Definitely recommend them, although I use DO exclusively for the Github student credit.
Benchmarks:
Vultr: https://gist.github.com/bobobo1618/0972fc51f49d90fb37af
DigitalOcean: https://gist.github.com/bobobo1618/81aa3f413b99aaab1f0d
[+] [-] corford|10 years ago|reply
I've got Vultr instances in all of their EU locations and haven't had any issues (connectivity wise or uptime wise). One note for Vultr: new accounts are limited to max 5 VPS instances by default until you open a support ticket and request the limit be raised (which they were happy to do, at least for me).
[+] [-] kentor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nly|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dubcanada|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worklogin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomassre|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaphp|10 years ago|reply
The only thing I dont like about DigitalOcean droplets is the requirement to shut off the server before resizing, Rackspace allowed me to do it without a need to shut it off.
[+] [-] arca_vorago|10 years ago|reply
What about hosting websites vs reselling access for some other purpose (eg. similar to game hosting services that allow full customer control of the instance?)
It seems to me like there is a lot of room for a tool that can spin up an instance over multiple VPS providers, because sometimes one will have a colo close to where you want and sometimes another will.
Anyone aware of comprehensive location based benchmarking of all the VPS's?
[+] [-] rayalez|10 years ago|reply
I'm a novice/intermediate programmer, and when I knew nothing about what VPS even was I started using Linode(due to many great recommendations).
Linode is a great service, but recently I've switched to DO and I like it so much more. As a person who just needs a simple and straightforward way to put several django projects online - DO offers me a simple and beautiful interface, cheaper prices, and a lot of great and extremely useful tutorials.
It is much nicer to use and a droplet price starts from $5/mo, which is freakin' awesome, and all I need from VPS service at this point.
Thank you guys, you are great, keep it up!
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Killswitch|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ape4|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsc|10 years ago|reply
Does this mean that they are operating at a loss?
[+] [-] carbocation|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mahn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r0naa|10 years ago|reply
For example, there have been a really big demand for NixOS for two years now but still no announcement whatsoever.
[+] [-] nailer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpg_92|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ablation|10 years ago|reply