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Linode (Akamai Cloud) Web Hosting Review - Pros, Cons & Rating 2026

Last updated: by Natalya Mallon
User reviews (372)

 Linode was built on a singular philosophy: make cloud computing simple, affordable, and accessible. For nearly two decades, it delivered on that promise with industry-leading documentation, consistent pricing, genuine 24/7 phone support, and developer-friendly Linux infrastructure. Linode effectively invented the "alternative cloud" category, proving that a bootstrapped, engineer-run provider could compete with hyperscalers on merit. 

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Quick Summary: Linode (Akamai Cloud) Review

Linode (Akamai Cloud) is a trusted provider web hosting provider rated 3.8/5 based on 372 user reviews . Founded in 2003, they operate servers in 24 locations worldwide.

Reviewed by Natalya Mallon · Last updated:

About Linode (Akamai Cloud):
Owner/CEO:
Akamai Technologies
Established:
2003
Phone:
(+1) 609-380-7100
Email:
[email protected]
Address:
249 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA
Servers Locations:
  • Data centrer in au
    Melbourne
  • Data centrer in au
    Sydney
  • Data centrer in br
    São Paulo
  • Data centrer in de
    Frankfurt
  • Data centrer in es
    Madrid
  • Data centrer in fr
    Paris
  • Data centrer in gb
    London
  • Show all
Servers Locations: 24
  • Melbourne
    Melbourne
  • Sydney
    Sydney
  • São Paulo
    São Paulo
  • Frankfurt
    Frankfurt
  • Madrid
    Madrid
  • Paris
    Paris
  • London
    London
  • Mumbai
    Mumbai
  • Chennai
    Chennai
  • Bangalore
    Bangalore
  • Milan
    Milan
  • Osaka
    Osaka
  • Tokyo
    Tokyo
  • Amsterdam
    Amsterdam
  • Stockholm
    Stockholm
  • Singapore
    Singapore
  • Atlanta
    Atlanta
  • Dallas
    Dallas
  • Fremont
    Fremont
  • Chicago
    Chicago
  • Seattle
    Seattle
  • Toronto
    Toronto
  • Washington D.C
    Washington D.C
  • Newark
    Newark
Customer Support: 10
English
Website: English
All languages (10)
English
Support: English
All languages (11)
Live chat
United States
Service Available
3.8/5
Trusted Provider
Features Good
Reliability Trustworthy
User Friendly Good
Support Good
Price Very affordable
Promotion Average coupon
Other Factors Good
Natalya Mallon
Author

Natalya Mallon

Last updated: 17 May 2026

Linode (Akamai Cloud)'s Screenshots

Linode Home

Linode Home

Cloud Manager

Cloud Manager

With my own expertise in VPS and server management to assess Linode—a well-known cloud hosting provider since 2003, now under Akamai. Here’s my take on its speed, pricing, server management tools, customer support, promotions, and a few other noteworthy aspects.
 
Linode

Speed

I’m impressed with Linode’s speed in regions like the US or near their 11 data centers (e.g., Fremont, London, Tokyo). With AMD EPYC CPUs, SSDs, and a 40Gbps network, page load times often dip below 1.5 seconds—fast enough for small to medium websites. That said, latency spikes if your audience is far away. Compared to DigitalOcean or AWS, Linode holds its own but doesn’t stand out. It’s reliable, though not exceptional.

Pricing

Linode starts at $5/month for its Shared CPU plan (1GB RAM, 1 core, 25GB SSD)—a steal for high-quality VPS. I like their hourly billing, which offers flexibility for short-term use without long contracts. However, add-ons like backups ($2/month) or NodeBalancer ($10/month) can inflate costs fast. For me, Linode’s pricing is reasonable, but not the cheapest compared to Vultr or Hostinger.

Server Management Software

I’m a fan of Linode’s Cloud Manager—clean, intuitive, and perfect for spinning up VPS instances, attaching load balancers, or monitoring resources. It’s not cPanel or Plesk, but for tech-savvy users, it’s a powerhouse. Their StackScripts for automation are a bonus if you’re comfortable with Linux. The downside? No Windows support—it’s Linux-only. I see this as a strength, but beginners might struggle.

Customer Support

Linode’s support impresses me with quick replies—tickets are often answered within 30 minutes, sometimes faster via IRC. The team knows their stuff, though I find they lean toward guiding you to fix issues yourself rather than fully hands-on help. Documentation is solid, and the community is active, but if you want managed hosting-style hand-holding, Linode falls short. Compared to Kamatera or Cloudways, they’re a step behind.

Promotions

Linode offers a generous $100 credit for 60 days of trial—plenty to test the waters. I think it’s a smart way to attract new users. That said, they don’t slash prices often like HostGator or Bluehost, and there are no flashy extras like free themes or plugins. For me, the $100 credit is enticing enough, but don’t expect jaw-dropping deals.

Other Noteworthy Points

    • Uptime: Linode promises 99.9% uptime and mostly delivers. I rarely see serious downtime complaints.
    • Security: Basic DDoS protection is included, but advanced firewalls require self-setup or extra fees.
    • Signup Hassle: A big gripe on TrustPilot—new accounts often get rejected for “fraud suspicion,” even with valid credit cards. I find this a major turn-off.

Conclusion

I give Linode an 8/10. Solid speed, fair pricing, flexible management, decent support, and a good trial offer. It’s perfect for developers or small businesses that know Linux and want a robust VPS without AWS-level complexity. But if you need simple hosting, top-tier support, or global performance, Linode isn’t the best fit. For me, it’s worth a shot—if you can get past the signup hurdle! What’s your take?

Linode (Akamai Cloud)

 Linode was built on a singular philosophy: make cloud computing simple, affordable, and accessible. For nearly two decades, it delivered on that promise with industry-leading documentation, consistent pricing, genuine 24/7 phone support, and developer-friendly Linux infrastructure. Linode effectively invented the "alternative cloud" category, proving that a bootstrapped, engineer-run provider could compete with hyperscalers on merit. 

Visit Site

Linode (Akamai Cloud) Key Specifications

Expert Rating
3.8/5
Trusted Provider
Based on TrustHostReview hands-on evaluation
User Rating
2.8/5
372 reviews
Aggregated visitor satisfaction score
Founded
2003
Servers
24 locations
Live Chat
Yes
Company
Akamai Technologies
Website
Visit Site

Pros and Cons

Here are the pros and cons of using Linode (Akamai Cloud) as your hosting platform.

Positives

Flat-rate billing with zero renewal shock — $5/mo Shared stays $5/mo with no annual contract required
Documentation at linode.com/docs is industry-leading by community consensus, covering architecture, security, and niche OSes like NixOS
99.99% per-region uptime SLA backed by Akamai Tier-1 backbone; rare incidents with public postmortems and no large-scale data loss in 22 years
GPU catalog among the most capable in developer-cloud: RTX 4000 Ada through RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, plus H100-backed Akamai Inference Cloud
200+ one-click Marketplace deployments covering the full developer stack, deployable in under 5 minutes

Negatives

2023 brand retirement and simultaneous 20% price hike destroyed long-term customer goodwill; Akamai enterprise umbrella signals continued pricing pressure
No live chat at any support tier in 2026 — an outlier vs DigitalOcean, Vultr, Hostinger, and Cloudways
New-account fraud false positives documented in dozens of Trustpilot and Reddit posts; legitimate developers denied activation without fast resolution
Akamai CDN not included in any Linode plan despite Akamai being the world's largest CDN provider
Three regions silently closed to new customers in 14 months (London, Washington DC, Jakarta) with no public consolidation roadmap

Interesting facts

Discover the unique features that make Linode (Akamai Cloud) stand out

Founded in 2003 by Christopher Aker in Philadelphia — one of the oldest cloud VPS providers, predating AWS EC2 by three years

Acquired by Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) in March 2022 for approximately 900 million USD — Akamai's largest acquisition in over 20 years

Linode brand officially retired February 2023, just 11 months after the acquisition closed; linode.com now redirects to an Akamai-branded interface

Within two weeks of the brand retirement, Akamai raised prices 20% across all plans and doubled the IPv4 address fee

Akamai Technologies is NYSE-listed with over 3.7 billion USD in annual revenue and operates 325,000+ servers across 135 countries

Three core regions — London, Washington DC, Jakarta — closed to new customers between August 2024 and January 2025

Linode (Akamai Cloud)'s rating Trusted Provider

We rate features of services on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest rating and 5 being the highest rating. We also take into account the opinions of other users when rating features. We read user reviews and feedback to get a sense of how other people are using the features and what they think of them.

Generally dependable with mostly positive trust signals. Clear policies, stable performance, and support that usually resolves common issues.

Features
4 /5 Good

Full cloud stack including GPU, Kubernetes, managed databases, and 200+ Marketplace apps; notable gap is no bundled CDN despite Akamai owning the world's largest commercial CDN

Reliability
4.4 /5 Trustworthy

22 years of operation, 99.99% per-region uptime SLA, Akamai Tier-1 backbone since 2022; long-term community confirms rare incidents with public postmortems and no record of large-scale data loss

User Experience
3.8 /5 Good

Cloud Manager is clean and developer-friendly; post-acquisition brand transition created navigation confusion; not suitable for non-technical users

Support
3.4 /5 Good

24/7 phone is genuinely useful for production incidents; no live chat at any tier is a 2026 outlier; new-account fraud flags create 24-48h resolution delays

Pricing
4.2 /5 Very affordable

Transparent hourly billing with monthly cap and no renewal shock; 20% 2023 price hike still leaves rates competitive against hyperscalers; clear and predictable

Promotions
3 /5 Average coupon

100 USD new-account credit only; no seasonal discounts, no long-term pricing incentives or promotional rate tricks

Other Factors
4 /5 Good

Akamai Tier-1 backbone, 22-year operating history, best-in-class developer documentation, no history of large-scale data loss events

Latest user reviews

CS
Crea Siry
• 7 months ago
MA
Mahziyar Azimzadeh
• 7 months ago
I’ve been a Linode user for a while, but since September I’ve completely lost access to my account and all related services — without receiving any email or warning beforehand.What’s worse is that I’ve tried multiple times to contact Linode support, but there has been no response or resolution. This level of service is really disappointing and unprofessional, especially for a company that presents itself as developer-friendly and reliable.I received a marketing email recently, which felt ironic considering my account is still inaccessible and no one has addressed my issue.At this point, I cannot recommend Linode to anyone who values stability and customer support.— Mahziyar Azimzadeh
SB
S Bliss
• 8 months ago
signed up, gave address, credit card details.Told me they were checking my account and it would be activated later. Within an hour got a snotty email telling me ...A recently created account with this email address was canceled by our automated systems. This was due to activity or patterns associated with fraudulent behavior. Additional attempts to sign up may also be rejected.This is the worst customer experience I've ever seen or heard of. They can keep their crappy service.And now they have my address and credit card details.Scary. Keep away from these cowboys !!
W
Waleed
• 8 months ago
I don't know why so negative here. Linode remains one of the best and most professional providers out there. Been a customer for over 10 years. Never a hiccup in the service.Their linodes are a bit pricey for the storage, but that's because they're ssd. For cheap storage, I use their object storage which is superb compared to other providers.
M
Marion
• 9 months ago
I’ve been charged for years for object storage when I took everything out of my storage they still were charging me. My card was expired. It still was charging me. I would not recommend this service to anyone.
SR
Sam Ross
• 9 months ago
Other people writting about this as well. Server been down for 18 hours so far - no end in sight. I wouldn't host with them to save my mothers life. Ruined the repuation of my business I have sent years building.
LJ
LeanLow Jo
• 9 months ago
Today experiencing a 7 hour downtime. Yes it wasn't a typo A 7 HOUR DOWNTIME that keeps on going, avoid like a plague.Edit: Total downtime was 22hours.....
M
mauyo
• 11 months ago
I‘m honestly surprised by the negative feedback on here. While my sign up experience wasn't flawless, the rest is pretty good! We‘ve been a customer of Linode for quite some time now and have never had a bad experience. Our K8s cluster never had a problem. What we really appreciate is the rapid deployment speeds of new nodes, takes maybe 1-2 minutes max with Linode compared to AWS where it can take up to 10 minutes. Billing also works just fine. Would choose Linode any day for managed Kubernetes.
LM
Lyubomir Markov
• 1 years ago
Racist company keep denying me services based on my name on the pretend that is because of fradualent activity when I've never had the access to their services. Network Chuck keep recomending them but i guess they sucks
P
PL
• 1 years ago
Cannot trust Akamai billing and lack of key infrastructure for a Cloud provider. For a student yes but for a big business they are not enterprise ready.

Linode (Akamai Cloud)'s Features

Money-Back Guarantee Money-Back Guarantee
Hourly Payments Hourly Payments
Monthly Payments Monthly Payments
Yearly Payments Yearly Payments
Domain Purchase Domain Purchase
REST API REST API
DDOS Protection DDOS Protection
Crypto Accepted Crypto Accepted
Affiliate Program Affiliate Program
Load Balancers Load Balancers
WordPress Hosting WordPress Hosting
VPS Hosting VPS Hosting
Cloud Hosting Cloud Hosting
Shared Hosting Shared Hosting
Website Builder Website Builder
Email Hosting Email Hosting
SSL Certificate(Free) SSL Certificate(Free)
Backup Services Backup Services
CDN Services CDN Services
Unlimited Hosting Unlimited Hosting
Object Storage Object Storage
Kubernetes Kubernetes
WooCommerce Hosting WooCommerce Hosting
Dedicated Server Dedicated Server
Reseller Hosting Reseller Hosting
Malware Scanner Malware Scanner
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Mobile App Mobile App
Free Site Migration Free Site Migration
NVMe SSD Storage NVMe SSD Storage
1-Click WordPress Install 1-Click WordPress Install
WAF Included WAF Included
E-commerce Hosting E-commerce Hosting
Managed WordPress Managed WordPress

Payment method
Show all (10)

PayPal is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
Bitcoin is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
VisaElectron is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
Visa is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
MasterCard is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
BankTranfer is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
American Express is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
Visa Credit is accepted at Linode (Akamai Cloud)
User reviews (372)

User reviews of Linode (Akamai Cloud)

This is where you can share your experience with Linode (Akamai Cloud). Read other users' reviews or write your own to highlight its pros and cons based on real use.

2.8

Reviewed by 372 users

5
134
4
31
3
9
2
16
1
182
0
0
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Honest user's ratings is our #1 priority! So providers can't pay to change or delete reviews.
CS
Trustpilot
Crea Siry
Netherlands Netherlands
7 months ago
worst internet.
Like 6 Dislike 6
MA
Trustpilot
Mahziyar Azimzadeh
United States United States
7 months ago
Lost Account Access Without Any Notice — No Support Response
I’ve been a Linode user for a while, but since September I’ve completely lost access to my account and all related services — without receiving any email or warning beforehand.What’s worse is that I’ve tried multiple times to contact Linode support, but there has been no response or resolution. This level of service is really disappointing and unprofessional, especially for a company that presents itself as developer-friendly and reliable.I received a marketing email recently, which felt ironic considering my account is still inaccessible and no one has addressed my issue.At this point, I cannot recommend Linode to anyone who values stability and customer support.— Mahziyar Azimzadeh
Like 6 Dislike 6
SB
Trustpilot
S Bliss
United States United States
8 months ago
Ridiculous Company
signed up, gave address, credit card details.Told me they were checking my account and it would be activated later. Within an hour got a snotty email telling me ...A recently created account with this email address was canceled by our automated systems. This was due to activity or patterns associated with fraudulent behavior. Additional attempts to sign up may also be rejected.This is the worst customer experience I've ever seen or heard of. They can keep their crappy service.And now they have my address and credit card details.Scary. Keep away from these cowboys !!
Like 6 Dislike 6
W
Trustpilot
Waleed
Russian Federation Russian Federation
8 months ago
Old company that knows what it's doing
I don't know why so negative here. Linode remains one of the best and most professional providers out there. Been a customer for over 10 years. Never a hiccup in the service.Their linodes are a bit pricey for the storage, but that's because they're ssd. For cheap storage, I use their object storage which is superb compared to other providers.
Like 6 Dislike 6
M
Trustpilot
Marion
United States United States
9 months ago
I’ve been charged for years for object…
I’ve been charged for years for object storage when I took everything out of my storage they still were charging me. My card was expired. It still was charging me. I would not recommend this service to anyone.
Like 4 Dislike 3
SR
Trustpilot
Sam Ross
United States United States
9 months ago
Avoid them
Other people writting about this as well. Server been down for 18 hours so far - no end in sight. I wouldn't host with them to save my mothers life. Ruined the repuation of my business I have sent years building.
Like 2 Dislike 2
LJ
Trustpilot
LeanLow Jo
Lithuania Lithuania
9 months ago
Today experiencing a 7 hour downtime
Today experiencing a 7 hour downtime. Yes it wasn't a typo A 7 HOUR DOWNTIME that keeps on going, avoid like a plague.Edit: Total downtime was 22hours.....
Like 2 Dislike 2
M
Trustpilot
mauyo
Switzerland Switzerland
11 months ago
Reliable provider and good K8s engine
I‘m honestly surprised by the negative feedback on here. While my sign up experience wasn't flawless, the rest is pretty good! We‘ve been a customer of Linode for quite some time now and have never had a bad experience. Our K8s cluster never had a problem. What we really appreciate is the rapid deployment speeds of new nodes, takes maybe 1-2 minutes max with Linode compared to AWS where it can take up to 10 minutes. Billing also works just fine. Would choose Linode any day for managed Kubernetes.
Like 2 Dislike 2
LM
Trustpilot
Lyubomir Markov
Bulgaria Bulgaria
1 years ago
Racist company keep denying me services…
Racist company keep denying me services based on my name on the pretend that is because of fradualent activity when I've never had the access to their services. Network Chuck keep recomending them but i guess they sucks
Like 2 Dislike 2
P
Trustpilot
PL
Australia Australia
1 years ago
Cannot trust Akamai billing and lack of…
Cannot trust Akamai billing and lack of key infrastructure for a Cloud provider. For a student yes but for a big business they are not enterprise ready.
Like 2 Dislike 2
Bonuses

Linode (Akamai Cloud) Coupons & Promos

Below is the list of currently valid coupons provided by Linode (Akamai Cloud). Please review the available offers and try applying them at checkout. If a coupon does not work, it may have regional restrictions, usage limits, or may have expired since our last verification.

$100 Free Credit for new accounts
United States

Welcome Coupons & Promo
Offer page: “Free $100 Credit” for trying the platform.
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NOT REQUIRED
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Referral program: Give $100, Get $25
United States

Welcome Coupons & Promo
If you sign up via someone’s referral link, you can receive $100, 60-day credit (after adding a valid payment method). Referrer can earn $25 after conditions are met.
Has promotion code worked for you?
Yes
No
NOT REQUIRED
Click to Unlock

Disclosure: Buying through our links...

Full Coupon T&C