23 July 2004. That was the date that I registered my very first domain, since then I have registered many, many more. At the time I was only 13, where shared hosting was the norm and I was trying to weigh up what was better – cPanel, Plesk or Helm.
Over the last ten years a lot has changed and I couldn't be any further from where I started. Since I started tinkering with websites I have tried a number of shared hosting providers, and I even experimented with reseller hosting for a couple of years before transitioning to VPS hosting which I used for my own projects and those which I maintained for clients.
Within the last two years I even tried switching to a dedicated Hetzner server, but this was short lived as I realised that this was overkill for my needs – I'd certainly use them again if I found I needed a fully fledged dedicated server.
For a brief period I tried hosting my website and projects on Heroku as a cheap alternative to web hosting. Personally, I found Heroku a little inflexible, having gone from a background of VPSs/dedicated servers where I could configure everything and anything. I was trying to operate on Heroku on a budge, and as a result, performance suffered. I used Heroku for at most a few months before making my latest leap.
This latest leap, the choice between Linode or Digital Ocean. During my prior VPS phase I had used Linode before, however I was prepared to approach this with fresh eyes and found myself reading up and researching before making a decision.
Both Digital Ocean and Linode offer a $10/month package – and there isn't much in it, Digital Ocean offers 6GB more storage at 30GB, but Linode offers better network performance. Linode won.