Published on October 3, 2022 by Kevin Graham
AWS or Amazon Web Services is a cloud platform that was developed by e-commerce giant Amazon. AWS offers a lot more cloud computing services than other cloud hosting platforms, including the ones listed here as alternatives (Vultr, Linode, UpCloud and DigitalOcean). Besides cloud hosting, it also offers gaming, VR and IoT technologies, machine learning applications, cloud financial management, and lots more.
While AWS certainly does have impressive and comprehensive tools and infrastructure up its sleeve, it certainly can be rather complex to use. That’s because their main target is not your regular user. It’s developers, big enterprises and startups. That also means that their customer support won’t be as inclusive as you’d like for the simple reason that, if you want that kind of support, you’d have to pay a lot more.
AWS does have a huge infrastructure, a large worldwide network consisting of 64 zones located in 21 regions with 169 points of presence. However, they only refer to these points in abstract geographical regions, unlike other hosting platforms, which tell you the cities as well.
That being said, I’m writing here about 4 AWS alternatives that can offer you everything you need in a cloud hosting platform without too much drama and too many unnecessary expenses.
Vultr, a high-performing cloud hosting platform with 100% network uptime, is aimed toward a wider user audience, including developers and startups. It offers plenty of flexibility and functionality and many services such as cloud hosting, managed Kubernetes, storage, managed databases, cloud GPU, single-tenant bare metal, and more.
Vultr is a leader when it comes to the number of data centers worldwide, offering 27 locations spread out across the globe:
Vultr has a comprehensive customer support system consisting of several elements. The Vultr Docs knowledge base HAS answers to all kinds of issues you may be facing as a user. You can also utilize the support ticket option or call. The FAQ section exists to help users with billing issues and dilemmas.
Voted “Easiest to use” in 2022, Linode is a US-based cloud hosting company that developers seem to particularly like. They offer 99.99% SLA uptime, the latest hardware and fast server performance, easy site migration and growth, scalability, and app development.
Linode has 11 data centers worldwide:
The pricing is not much different than the other companies on the list. Linode also makes it quite easy to upgrade your plan but also to downgrade it if you want to cut expenses.
There’s plenty to choose from – from shared or dedicated servers, high memory plans for more demanding projects, to bare metal plans, and much more.
24/7 available tech support is available should you encounter any issues with the services you’re using. You can either submit a support ticket, reach them through email or phone, or through the Linode IRC channel.
UpCloud is another cloud hosting company with a great 100% SLA uptime record and top-notch server infrastructure.
You can find UpCloud’s data centers at 12 places around the world:
UpCloud’s pricing is, pretty affordable and, again, pretty similar to the other companies here.
UpCloud offers 24/7 available live chat that you can access as a user through the Control Panel. You can also email their support team.
DigitalOcean is a cloud hosting platform that is especially aimed at developers. They offer top-notch cloud servers (which they call Droplets) and also managed services like managed databases, object storage and Kubernetes clusters.
DigitalOcean has 13 data centers around the world:
DigitcalOcean is an exception from the other companies listed here, in that it’s slightly more expensive.
DigitalOcean offers all the basics from tech support, but it is less comprehensive than the other ones on our list. It has a knowledge base where you can find support articles, community, and product documentation alongside the DigitalOcean Marketplace.
You can also open a ticket if you have an immediate problem you want solved.
As you can see, these 4 cloud hosting platforms offer similar tools and services, and their prices don’t really differ that much (with DigitalOcean being slightly more expensive than the others), but all four of them generally being less expensive than AWS.
What it comes down to are nuances and what you specifically need for your line of work from that particular company. Linode and DigitalOcean are great for developers, while Vultr and UpCloud offer overall good cloud infrastructure; Vultr has the most data centers compared to the other three.
And last but not least, I just wanted to say that when you buy directly from these four platforms, you get only basic server functionality and support. If you buy from WP Bolt, however, you will receive a fully managed and supported server whether you choose Vultr, Linode, UpCloud or DigitalOcean.
Speed up your WordPress site today by moving to WP Bolt.