... they are kind of too new to have a track record one way or the other aren't they?
Same for the hardware. they are the new kids on the block. For now it's the newest and shiniest but long term lets see how they keep pace. Linode's been around a while and done a good job of dragging all it's customer's along to newer hardware.
The people behind DigitalOcean have been around for a while with ServerStack, the parent company. The main engineers also used to work at another major cloud hosting company.
Same for the hardware. they are the new kids on the block. For now it's the newest and shiniest but long term lets see how they keep pace. Linode's been around a while and done a good job of dragging all it's customer's along to newer hardware.