Nimbus Hosting vs DigitalOcean

AppleAndMango

Active member
I've been with Nimbus hosting for awhile now roughly a year ish? I have nothing bad to say about them they're quite possibly the best host I've ever used before anyway I came across DigitalOcean a few days ago and their VPS costs a much cheaper than what I'm currently paying.

I know Nimbus Hosting VPS's are managed and DigitalOceans are fully self managed.

I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to Plesk which is what I use with Nimbus and I can install Plesk via SSH with DigitalOcean so that's fine, my concern is what else will I need to do with the VPS with DigitalOcean to make it secure?
 
Nimbus aren't cheap but they are superb - "You get what you pay for"

If you're managing your server yourself you'll need to keep on top of patches, updates, etc
 
Do bear in mind that you aren't going to be able to do everything through Plesk, you will need to do other stuff directly on the server. For example, I wanted Imagic installed and FFmpeg updated (I don't believe you can do either from Plesk). With Nimbus Hosting, I just requested this and they took care of it. Similarly I just asked them to upgrade PHP for me (it had to be a 'proper' upgrade as just switching to a higher PHP version in Plesk gave me a version without Imagic and FFmpeg). With self hosting you would have to do this yourself. Now it's not that difficult to do these things (with a bit of knowledge, of course) but for me it comes down to saving time and effort that I can put towards other things. If you're happy to take these aspects on to save you money, then do go ahead. If not, stick with Nimbus as this is what the extra cost effectively is paying for.
 
Do bear in mind that you aren't going to be able to do everything through Plesk, you will need to do other stuff directly on the server. For example, I wanted Imagic installed and FFmpeg updated (I don't believe you can do either from Plesk). With Nimbus Hosting, I just requested this and they took care of it. Similarly I just asked them to upgrade PHP for me (it had to be a 'proper' upgrade as just switching to a higher PHP version in Plesk gave me a version without Imagic and FFmpeg). With self hosting you would have to do this yourself. Now it's not that difficult to do these things (with a bit of knowledge, of course) but for me it comes down to saving time and effort that I can put towards other things. If you're happy to take these aspects on to save you money, then do go ahead. If not, stick with Nimbus as this is what the extra cost effectively is paying for.

I understand there's going to be certain things I'll need to update/install via SSH which I'm fine with. I think I have a month left with Nimbus so I'll have a play around with DigitalOcean before I decide.

Thanks guys!
 
Have they resolved their DDOS attack issues? I honestly haven't kept up with them since I use a dedi.

More or less. They're still having intermittent connectivity issues here and there, but everything seems to have settled down. But that along with the major security compromises they have regularly, I'm not really sure how anybody can recommend Linode in good faith. I just don't get it, to be honest.
 
I was with Nimbus but having loads of issues with down time. The support seemed good in that they were there on the phone, but they could not fix the problems.

I switched to hosting with @MattW and he got everything running very smoothly and much faster.
 
Go for Linode, neither of those would be my preference. Then again, I've heard good about Nimbus Hosting, but my preference would still be a VPS with Linode. After years in system administration and using all kinds of hosts, all around the spectrum, I've settled with Linode in the end, as a VPS provider anyway.
 
More or less. They're still having intermittent connectivity issues here and there, but everything seems to have settled down. But that along with the major security compromises they have regularly, I'm not really sure how anybody can recommend Linode in good faith. I just don't get it, to be honest.
What do you recommend then?

You can't prevent a DDoS attack on their routers, you just can't. DigitalOcean have similar infrastructure, just they didn't get attacked. Linode isn't having any connectivity issues since starting 2016, if I remember correctly. Linode hasn't had any (major) security compromises that I know of.

As for: https://blog.linode.com/2016/01/05/security-notification-and-linode-manager-password-reset/
I'd say that's a security precaution. I asked, and they didn't have immediate evidence to say there was any compromise of their servers, but there could have possibly been some leaked data. As a good, respectful company they forced a password change for security.

https://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident-update/
This was a security problem with their manager years ago, and it was down to Adobe's software, not on their end, even though the problem still happened. I don't believe they use Adobe for their manager anymore, though.
 
Correction, none on my nodes since the start of 2016*.

Newark and Fremont aren't really the most common locations for serving data globally (which were the affected nodes), which I assume most forum owners do. I'd assume more central America or Amsterdam, if specifically for Europe.

At least Linode are honest about their downtime, though. https://status.digitalocean.com/?year=2015 I know for a fact DO have had more downtime on certain nodes than that, even if for small periods.
 
On record, I can't lie and say anything other than regardless of what DO do, I definitely won't be going back to them. My time with them kinda sucked. Their technicians were clueless, I only really liked the community managers, as they called themselves, which interacted positively with their customers and got in touch every now and then. I think they gave me a lot in credits just for answering some questions on their Questions system, too. But their technical support, random downtimes, the hard disk corruption then denial it was their fault and other screwups throughout my many droplets with them, they definitely weren't satisfactory.

Linode, on the other hand, I've had some connectivity issues, at best. In fact, the only ones I had were the ones at Christmas. I can't remember my nodes being affected other than then. That being said, their support team is excellent. Smaller than DO's, but quick responses nevertheless and much more useful ones. It's a host I don't need to be paranoid with, about my data and be spending more time worrying about system stuff rather than other stuff.

So my opinion is relatively biased by personal opinion and even some unrelated events, but Linode is much more comfortable to be with and I've had no problems with them throughout my long service with them. They're fab, and that's why I'll recommend them. I feel like their downtime is exaggerated. Like I said, the only downtime I've really had is the one at Christmas, when their whole network was affected. It wasn't exactly downtime, either. It was random timeouts and long ping times, not completely down, for the most part anyway.
 
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