[lprez]

A real direct competitor in DO and Linode is Vultr.com

My experience with them has been positive. They have slightly higher specs and a good variety of locations.

[Kudos]

Anecdotal web hosting recommendations are worse than useless and everyone seems to have one regardless of how qualified they are to give it.

[pdq]

I have used Vultr's $5/month service for at least the past 6 months. It has only restarted once unexpectedly, and the CPU performance is quite impressive for that price.