For a lot of people “momentum” is a factor: Linode has been around for significantly longer and has been fairly stable/reliable for the whole of that time even implementing a couple of complete tech stack changes¹ better than many other companies seem to manage. In the early days they were ahead of their time.

While Linode were at the head of the pack for a while, their product range, features, and UX, did stagnate at certain times, at those points DO and other companies looked more attractive for new customers.

As the market for such services has homogenised somewhat, with there being few genuinely unique-to-one-provider offerings, small differences in price/features at the scale you are buying, and differences in where data-centres are located & what their bandwidth peering is like from the PoV of your target users, are usually the deciding factors. All other things being equal, check if any of them has a special offer on!

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[1] Their services were originally user-mode-linux based², then switched to Xen³, then to KVM.

[2] I used them during that period.

[3] at the time of that switch I'd just moved to UML on a dedicated server for my own stuff, and later moved to a mix of containers & KVM.

Does Digital Ocean offer this service at prices competitive with (legacy) Linode? The site is a confusing mess of buzzwords and made-up terms, which is nothing like the straightforward presentation that was part of the attraction for Linode (and for Slicehost before them).

I find DO immediately offputting.

Way too many bots and other automated stuff running on throwaway DO nodes.