Linode (Akamai Connected Cloud)

Linode was the original developer VPS; Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ-listed, Cambridge, Massachusetts) bought it for about $900 million in March 2022 and folded it into Akamai Connected Cloud, adding core sites across Akamai's network so that the footprint now runs to roughly 25 locations, with London (two sites), Amsterdam, Frankfurt (two), Madrid, Milan, Paris and Stockholm in Europe. Non-US customers contract with Akamai Technologies International AG in Switzerland, but the master agreement is governed by New Jersey law and the ultimate owner is a US public company, which is why the grid calls it US-owned with a local entity. The compliance scope for the cloud business (ISO 27001, SOC 2) could not be read from Akamai's trust centre, and there is no CLOUD Act statement or EU line.

Prices in US dollars, tax-exclusive with UK VAT applied at 20% unless a VAT number is registered, read 8 September 2026; the "Europe" pricing page is still in dollars. A Nanode 1 GB (1 shared CPU, 1 GB, 25 GB, 1 TB transfer) is $5 a month ($0.0075 an hour); the reference Linode 4 GB (2 shared CPUs, 4 GB, 80 GB, 4 TB transfer) is $24 ($0.036 an hour); the dedicated-CPU G7 equivalent is $43. Backups are a flat add-on per plan, $5 a month on the 4 GB plan, so the real monthly cost of the reference server is $29, IPv4 included, and powered-off instances are still billed. Transfer is pooled across the account and overage is $0.005 per GB in the core data centres, the lowest of the US providers here; block storage $0.10 per GB, object storage $0.02 per GB with a terabyte of transfer free, snapshots via the Images product at $0.10 per GB, NodeBalancers $10, managed MySQL, PostgreSQL and Valkey from $16, LKE Kubernetes with nodes at instance prices, a $100 credit for new accounts. The Marketplace apps carry no stated maintainer or cadence on any page we could read. The only MCP server under the Linode and Akamai GitHub organisations is scoped to Kubernetes Cluster API, so there is no general one.

The reputation is the weak point. Trustpilot reads about 2.5 on around 207 reviews (roughly a third five-star and half one-star; the figures were summarised rather than read verbatim and should be re-checked), with a new account disabled by a fraud filter after adding a card, 18-hour and 22-hour outages in July 2025, object-storage charges continuing after deletion, and account access lost without notice. Support channels, hours and the SLA could not be verified from a current page. Linode remains a sound, well-priced VPS with a London site; the Akamai years have added locations and taken some of the shine.

Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, documentation and third-party reviews.