VPS Showdown – January 2018 – DigitalOcean vs. Linode vs. Vultr

As promised, I am trying to get a new VPS Showdown post out on a monthly basis.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to do them at the beginning of each month or not,
but I am glad I waited as DigitalOcean shook things up by doubling their RAM
offerings and bumped a few other stats.

Now DigitalOcean, Linode and Vultr offer the same amount of RAM at the same
price points!

Just like last month, I went ahead and spun up 3 servers for DigitalOcean,
Linode and Vultr at both the 5$ and 20$ price points. All of the servers were
running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS x64 and around the same vicinity of New York City /
Newark, New Jersey.

The data shown is the average of the results.

I’ve also normalized the stats a bit better so I wouldn’t have to field a bunch
of comments letting me know that 1 GB is the same as 1024 MB. Hey, it’s not my
fault that each hosting company uses a different dialect of marketing speak 😉

$5 Showdown

  DigitalOcean Linode Vultr
Location New York 1 Newark, NJ New York (NJ)
RAM 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB
CPU 1 Core 1 Core 1 Core
SSD 25 GB 20 GB 25 GB
Transfer 1 TB 1TB 1 TB
CPU (time taken) (seconds) 15.2390 12.5243 13.02643
Memory (Read) (MB/sec) 1476.54 2210.50 2007.96
Memory (Write) (MB/sec) 1481.69 2204.90 2022.00
File I/O (MB/sec) 77.030 58.709 59.202
MySQL (Read/write) (req/sec) 3784.87 7409.49 5300.14
ab (req/sec) (mean) 1188.10 1204.38 2085.78
ab (transfer rate) (Kbytes/sec) 13108.23 13217.78 23379.82

Linode put up great numbers in almost all of the categorie with the exceptions
of file I/O and ab. Vultr’s marketing is always talking about
network speed so it’s not too surprising for them to perform better there.

DigitalOcean may have taken the fil I/O but it’s worth nothing that Linode and
Vultr both performed consistent across each server instance while DigitalOcean
had one instance that performed wildly better than the other two (bringing up
the average considerably).

Vultr used to be the frontrunner in regard to their SSD offering, but since
DigitalOcean’s pricing changes, they are now tied.

$20 Showdown

  DigitalOcean Linode Vultr
Location New York 1 Newark, NJ New York (NJ)
RAM 4 GB 4 GB 4 GB
CPU 2 Cores 2 Cores 2 Cores
SSD 80 GB 48 GB 60 GB
Transfer 4 TB 4 TB 4 TB
CPU (time taken) (seconds) 15.9424 12.5850 12.8183
Memory (Read) (MB/sec) 1039.30 2184.88 2126.74
Memory (Write) (MB/sec) 1035.82 2171.47 2137.90
File I/O (MB/sec) 90.969 132.933 104.231
MySQL (Read/write) (req/sec) 3988.07 7870.39 6215.92
ab (req/sec) (mean) 1249.92 1138.23 2164.41
ab (transfer rate) (Kbytes/sec) 13842.98 12346.76 24569.35

Unlike the 5$ tier, DigitalOcean’s new 20$ plan didn’t tie Vultr’s SSD offering
but blew it out of the water!

Vultr continued to reign supreme with the ab tests and even though they didn’t
take any other categories, they were just a hair behind Linode for most of them.

Just like the 5$ tier, I had one DigitalOcean droplet that performed drastically
different than the other two. Vultr and Linode both performed fairly consistent
across each of the instances I was running.

Conclusion

Even though DigitalOcean is now offering more for the same price, the data is
still in favor of Linode and Vultr.

But as always, it really depends on what you need.

If you’re looking at the data above, Linode’s the clear choice as they excel is
just about every category.

Worried about network speed? Vultr’s got you covered while also offering a bit
more storage space.

And if storage space if your major concern, DigitalOcean is going to give you
the most bang for your buck.

Regardless of which provider you go with, please don’t forgot about this post
and please please please use one of my referral links below.

Last Valentine’s Day Linode announced a 5$ plan, wonder if they will have
anything in store for us next month!


If you have found these posts informative and helpful in searching for a new hosting provider, please consider using one of the links below when signing up:

  • DigitalOcean, new accounts receive $200 in credit (good for 60 days)
  • Linode, new accounts receive $100 in credit (also good for 60 days)
  • Vultr, new accounts also receive $100 in credit (good for only 14 days)
  • UpCloud, new accounts receive €25 in credit (yes, that’s in Euros)
Josh Sherman - The Man, The Myth, The Avatar

About Josh

Husband. Father. Pug dad. Musician. Founder of Holiday API, Head of Engineering and Emoji Specialist at Mailshake, and author of the best damn Lorem Ipsum Library for PHP.


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