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Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Alibaba Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai Connected Cloud (Lin...
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (12th)
Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is 7.2%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 12.5%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Julio Graham - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful automation scripts, good documentation, responsive support, easy to use and manage
The ability to fire up a virtual machine, use it, and then kill it, is quite a valuable feature for me. They have a lot of startup scripts, I think they are called stack scripts, whereby you can install something at a click of a button. For instance, you can install a whole server at the click of a button. Linode gives the users a lot of control. Another thing that I use quite a lot is their documentation. They have documentation on how to perform tasks and often, I use that to educate a client on how to do something or on how to maintain something, et cetera. This is because a lot of customers are used to simpler systems like an iPhone, where if you want an app then you just download it from a store, press a button and it installs, or press a button and it updates. The truth of the matter is that with servers and things like that, whilst people like the push button idea, it's a lot more complex than that. With these stack scripts, the people at Linode have thought about all of the things that a new user would not think about. They do all of that stuff and then walk you through it, and that's where Linode's documentation is really good. They walk you through what you have to do to secure a server, what you have to do to run a patch, or whatever. They've got all those sorts of knowledge bases of information, which I think is invaluable, especially for clients who are uneducated in these things. It's extremely important to me that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers, for various reasons. One is that because we live in this global world, our customers are everywhere. Secondly, for people who need geo-redundancy, with for example a server in China and one elsewhere as a backup, it's great. It's also nice because if they were just US-based, I wouldn't be able to use them because I would need to go through a whole process of trying to certify the data integrity in other regions. I'm sure that most people wouldn't bother with this because of all of the EU laws and the UK laws around data privacy. The US's data privacy laws are far more relaxed than what they are on my side of the world. The fact that I can have a server in London means that I don't have to bother with all of that. My physical location of that server is in London and to me, it is really important. When you compare Amazon, they claim to have infrastructure all over the place but I think that the bulk is centered in Germany. Even if it is in a few different places, everything gets backed up to the US, which is a problem for a lot of people.
Aderonke  Adeyegbe - PeerSpot reviewer
Good storage, great for smaller companies, and has impressive support
We're all aware that the pandemic accelerated digital transformation, and we believe that Alibaba, due to its pedigree, has what it takes to take small businesses to the cloud. It's a game-changer, for sure. The storage is very useful. It is easy to set up. Technical support is good. It is quite stable.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features are the simple scalability and ease of starting a new virtual machine."
"It has helped to minimize the risk and scale services at large in virtually no time."
"The ability to fire up a virtual machine, use it, and then kill it, is quite a valuable feature for me."
"Linode has many other cloud servers across the globe."
"The solution integrates easily."
"It is also important that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers. The ability to deploy on multiple servers, worldwide, allows us to have distributed services and failover and redundancy."
"Service availability is the most valuable feature. It gives every user 100 percent uptime."
"Generally speaking, I have not found any faults using Linode. For what we wanted, they provided a complete solution."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
 

Cons

"Its cost can be improved."
"It would be helpful if they provided the additional Linux distributions that I prefer using. But there is still a workaround. I can do it without direct support. It's a bit more complicated, but it can still be done."
"I've had some difficulties with some of their IP addresses being banned by certain mail servers."
"They recently changed the web interface and although the older one did not look as good, the new one is less responsive."
"The network between different servers isn't very good. I have to install additional solutions to link the servers with each other."
"I would like to see more seamless integration with backup, although it's pretty easy to do."
"It would be nice if they had more data centers in Latin America."
"It would be helpful if they offered a service where they handle the Linux security."
"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"The solution should have more integration."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"It is not robust."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we started with the service, the cost was approximately €5 per month."
"Currently, we are at $40 a month but they have costly solutions as well."
"I pay $5 per month for each of three servers, for a total of $15 per month, and I normally prepay a few months in advance."
"There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees to include things like extra public IPs and backup services."
"The value for the price is really good."
"Pricing is very good and flexible, according to the resources required."
"Being that they are small, their prices are slightly higher than the large providers like Amazon if you compare raw computing power."
"The pricing model is very simple. I like the simplicity of it, starting at $5, then doubling as it goes up from there. That is a brilliant idea, and it is not complex at all. It is about as dead simple as you can imagine. So, if you want to double what you have, then you double your price, pay the money, and reboot. It is done. It's that simple. You can't beat that."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"The product is not that expensive."
"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Linode?
When I started using Linode, I found its functionality easy to navigate, user-friendly and responsive to my needs. It provides clear reminders about services I'm not using, like DNS zones, which I ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Linode?
I find Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)'s pricing very competitive. They never charge extra without improvements. I always receive more features for the same price.
What needs improvement with Linode?
There was an option to sort domains by tags, which seems to have been removed. It would be useful to have the option to sort or group by tags on the domains page.
What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Best Buy, Panasonic, Giphy, Marco Polo, World Health Organization, Font Squirrel
Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs. Alibaba Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.