Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Alibaba Cloud comparison

Akamai and Alibaba are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Akamai is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.5, while Alibaba is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.6. Akamai holds a 9.8% mindshare in ISI, compared to Alibaba’s 7.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Alibaba users who would recommend it.

Akamai Connected Cloud (Lin...

Read 32 Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) reviews

7,000 Views
6,020 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Alibaba Cloud

Read 19 Alibaba Cloud reviews

5,569 Views
5,569 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Akamai Connected Cloud (Lin...

Alibaba Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Alibaba Cloud and Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) compete in the cloud service category. Alibaba Cloud may have the edge for businesses focused on diverse infrastructure needs and cost-effectiveness in Asia, while Linode appeals with simplicity and speed.

Features: Alibaba Cloud offers secure hosting, a variety of infrastructure services, and user-friendly compute solutions, making it ideal for businesses with local data requirements. It is generally considered more cost-effective than AWS and Google Cloud. Linode, part of Akamai Connected Cloud, emphasizes simplicity and cost-effectiveness, with notable speed and flexibility in scaling resources. Users appreciate Linode’s straightforward Linux-based offerings and its global data center network.

Room for Improvement: Alibaba Cloud users suggest improvements in user-friendliness, API support, and SDK functions, with existing concerns about latency and customer support efficiency. Linode can enhance offerings by expanding data center locations, providing managed databases, and developing sophisticated DevOps workflows along with stricter security features on par with larger providers.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Alibaba Cloud and Linode offer public, private, and hybrid cloud deployment options. Alibaba Cloud's technical support is recognized for its responsiveness but would benefit from enhanced documentation and knowledge. Linode is praised for simplicity and ease of use; however, there's a call for improvements in technical support availability and depth.

Pricing and ROI: Alibaba Cloud is acknowledged for competitive pricing and is often cheaper than AWS and Azure, with a pay-as-you-go model aiding effective cost management. Linode offers predictable, transparent pricing, valued for budget-friendly options, especially for smaller applications, and is compared favorably against the complex pricing of larger providers like AWS and Azure.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs. Alibaba Cloud Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs. Alibaba Cloud

February 2026

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Helped 881,733 peers since 2012

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)

3rd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (8th)

Alibaba Cloud

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

7th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is 9.8%, up from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 7.7%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)	9.8%
Alibaba Cloud	7.7%
Other	82.5%

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Julio Graham

Managing Director at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Support resolves issues quickly and helps in expanding storage efficiently

Their support is really good. I can ask anything at any time, and they are able to resolve issues like reinstating deleted Linodes. They include features like retaining deleted Linodes for 30 days. They offer volumes and object storage, which I can add quickly, and they are high speed. I can easily expand space for database work. Although I used to create images, I found them outdated and prefer installing new images.

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Min HtetOo

Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence

The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved

The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Because of the way that their pricing model is set up, I can scale up or down the size of a customer's server very easily. It makes life very easy for me when they run out of space, need more speed or RAM, etc. I can very easily pay the difference and reboot the machine, and now I have the upgrade that I wanted. That just makes it extremely simple."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is that they are flexible and easy to get ahold of if I need something."

"Generally speaking, I have not found any faults using Linode. For what we wanted, they provided a complete solution."

"Service availability is the most valuable feature. It gives every user 100 percent uptime."

"I very much like the support that you get, and I think that it's excellent."

"The ability to fire up a virtual machine, use it, and then kill it, is quite a valuable feature for me."

"Linode offers cost-effective pricing, and it enables me to swiftly deploy my services."

More Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) pros

"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."

"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."

"We use the solution to run VMs."

"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."

"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."

"The installation is easy."

"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."

More Alibaba Cloud pros

Cons

"It would be helpful if they offered a service where they handle the Linux security."

"Before they changed the dashboard, I found some of the more granular options easier to find."

"I'm not sure what could be improved at Linode since they're likely already making enhancements, especially with the Akamai acquisition and, I don't have any specific suggestions as I haven't encountered any major issues. I might consider using API for managing DNS records, but overall, I'm satisfied with Linode."

"The Cloud Manager interface sometimes feels slow, particularly when accessed from Asia."

"Because they are a smaller company, they do not have, for example, all of the ways for authentication that Amazon or Azure has."

"There is no notification from the company regarding upgrades."

"They recently changed the web interface and although the older one did not look as good, the new one is less responsive."

"They are already working on the firewalls and VLANs, which need improvement, and are now in beta. I am on the beta program for the firewalls, but I can't use it yet because they are only in Mumbai and Australia, and I am not in those data centres. This is the one thing that I have been waiting for almost since the day that I joined them, so it is nice that they are doing that. The VLANs will be an improvement as well, and I am keen and waiting for that."

More Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) cons

"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."

"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."

"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."

"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."

"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."

"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."

"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."

"I think that sometimes the customer service for Alibaba Cloud is inefficient.... Sometimes it's hard to reach out to them."

More Alibaba Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The pricing model is simple."

"Pricing-wise, I find it simple in that they give you a monthly fee, but they also charge it hourly. So, if you are using the service for a small part of the month, then you are only paying for that small amount instead of a whole month, like with other providers. It is a flat monthly fee if you use the service for the entire month. It just makes things so simple. Because they are focusing on Linux, you don't have to worry about licensing costs of Windows and things like that. So, the price that they give you is the price that you need to pay each month. I just find it so simple compared to the likes of AWS and Azure. It is nice, easy, and predictable. I know exactly what I am going to be paying each month and what resources I get for that price."

"There might be something a little bit cheaper but I find it very fair and competitive, and nothing to complain about."

"I pay just over £20 per month and have done so ever since I started eight years ago, which to me is good value."

"One key difference is that pricing is very hard to come by and to understand with all the bigger companies. Their pricing models are so weird and it's hard to figure out exactly how much I am going to pay for this kind of service. Everything is piecemeal. With Linode, it's simple and straightforward. You know exactly what you will have to pay at the end of the day."

"When we started with the service, the cost was approximately €5 per month."

"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."

More Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."

"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."

"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."

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."

More Alibaba Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

University

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	1

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	7

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 ...

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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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Linode?

I am not satisfied with the customization options from Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) because I still haven't tried any new capabilities provided by them yet. I am still keeping it as a virtual se...

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What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?

ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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,...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)

Compared 81% of the time

Google Cloud vs Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)

Compared 3% of the time

DigitalOcean vs Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)

Compared 2% of the time

SAP S4HANA on AWS vs Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)

Compared 1% of the time

More Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) Competitors

Amazon AWS vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 26% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 25% of the time

Google Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 18% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 14% of the time

DigitalOcean vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Alibaba Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud

February 2026

Download Alibaba Cloud product report

Overview

Simplify your cloud infrastructure with our Linux virtual machines and robust set of tools to develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier.

Linode believes that in order to accelerate innovation in the cloud, virtual computing must be more accessible, affordable, and simple. Our infrastructure-as-a-service platform is deployed across 11 global markets from our data centers around the world and is supported by our Next Generation Network, advanced APIs, comprehensive services, and vast library of educational resources. Linode products, services, and people enable developers and businesses to build, deploy, and scale applications more easily and cost-effectively in the cloud.

Increase storage capacity with additional Block Storage or S3-compatible Object Storage. Add instant Backups with complete independency to your stack. Ensure your applications and services are highly-available with Linode NodeBalancers. Deploy Kubernetes clusters with our fully-managed container orchestration engine.

Linode Pricing Page

CPU, transfer, storage, and RAM bundled into one simple price.

Akamai

Alibaba Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to support growing enterprises worldwide, including data storage, relational databases, big-data processing, and content delivery networks.

Alibaba

Sample Customers

Best Buy, Panasonic, Giphy, Marco Polo, World Health Organization, Font Squirrel

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs. Alibaba Cloud

February 2026

Free Report: Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs. Alibaba Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs. Alibaba Cloud and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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