GoDaddy.com and Linode.com both have strong industry records for reliable and affordable VPS hosting, but which of them is better for you? A simple VPS comparison of their features, pricing, payment, and customer support may help you discover which hosting option is ideal for your unique needs.
Features and infrastructure
Linode VPS hosting options include a variety of valuable tools for amateur and professional web developers, including lush access for SSH, multiple Linux distribution support, boot configuration profiles, network usage graphs, automatic crash reboots, and support for multiple IPs.
On the other hand, GoDaddy VPS hosting includes free SSL certificates, 3 dedicated IPs, bandwidth overage protection, a “Tipping Point” virus protection system, and $150 in free credit for Yahoo, Bing, and Facebook ads.
GoDaddy’s state of the art datacenters are located in the US and Europe. These datacenters are unique among hosting solutions due to their emphasis on EPA-approved diesel generators and eco-friendly refrigerants. GoDaddy also promises 99.9% uptime, and supports that promise with a 20 gbps Ethernet backbone and full incremental data backups.
Plans and payment
GoDaddy offers five types of hosting packages (Economy, Value, Deluxe, Premium, Ultimate) for each type of operating system it supports (CentOS, Fedora, Windows). The Economy package includes 1GB of RAM, 40GB of storage, and 1,000GB of bandwidth. These values incrementally increase to a maximum of 8GB of RAM, 240GB of storage, and 8,000GB of bandwidth with the Ultimate plan.
Each plan is available with four different payment plans for 1 month, 6 month, 12 month, and 24 month subscriptions. One month of Economy costs $29.99/month while 24 months costs $23.99/month. These prices steadily increase for each plan ($29.99, $39.99, $59.99, $79.99, and $149.99 respectively), but remain consistent between both Linux and Windows hosting.
Linode offers five basic plans and five business class plans, each plan hosted by Linux. Their basic plans include 512-4096MB of RAM, 20-160GB of storage, and 200-1,600GB of bandwidth for $19.95-$79.95 monthly. Their five business class plans offer 160-800GB of storage, 4-20GB of RAM, and 1,600-2,000GB of bandwidth for $159.95-$799.95 monthly. Ten and fifteen percent subscription discounts are available for one and two year subscriptions respectively.
Customer support
GoDaddy’s hosting includes free support for a variety of technical problems including server failure and root password changes. E-mail support is available on their websites and includes an up-to-date expected response time for all inquiries. Their telephone support is available 24/7 and includes an up-to-date response time available on their website.
Linode offers telephone and online ticket submission support with experts available 24/7 and promises that most website tickets are answered in minutes. Their website also includes a comprehensive FAQ section and support forum allowing you to ask questions and get advice from fellow webmasters.
Daniel C.
Sander D.
We have been having problems with 10%+ packet loss between customers and Linode’s Atlanta DC for about a week now. We were told by Linode to provide a MTR showing the 10% packet loss and they would be happy to investigate. Tonight we provided the MTR to Linode showing the packet loss. This was Linode’s response: “If your MTR report shows small amounts of loss in the neighborhood of 10%, there is no cause for real concern.” I think your other readers would like to know that Linode believes delivering only 90% of your customer’s traffic to their machines is normal and acceptable. I don’t know about you but 10% packet loss causes all kinds of strange problems for web applications and should be taken seriously by any hosting company.