DigitalOcean App Platform vs. VMware vSphere

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
DigitalOcean App Platform
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The DigitalOcean App Platform enables developers to build, deploy, and scale apps on what they describe as a simple, fully managed PaaS. Users of the former Nanobox, acquired by DigitalOcean in 2019, have been migrated to the App Platform upon Nanobox's end of life in March 2021.
$5
per month
VMware vSphere
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
An enterprise workload platform, vSphere is used to improve the performance for a data center. It is used to boost operational efficiency, supercharge workload performance, and accelerate innovation.
$995
per year
Pricing
DigitalOcean App PlatformVMware vSphere
Editions & Modules
Basic
$5
per month
Professional
$12
per month
Standard
$995.00
per year
Enterprise
$3,995.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DigitalOcean App PlatformVMware vSphere
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DigitalOcean App PlatformVMware vSphere
Considered Both Products
DigitalOcean App Platform
Chose DigitalOcean App Platform
It can help you to host your virtual appliance or serverless application at very low cost. DigitalOcean marketplace also helps you to deploy the serverless app or virtual appliance effortlessly. It is suitable for small scale deployment and the process to setup an account and …
Chose DigitalOcean App Platform
The ability to choose your own cloud provider is huge, especially for a small start up like I have. We have a lot of free credit from AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Azure, etc...

The data layer is baked into the system which is better for integration then an external provider.
VMware vSphere
Chose VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere is leader in virtualization segment and ease of use and manageability is very easy and integrated with more vendors in ecosystem like Redhat openshift, VMware vSphere is directly integrated whereas for Nutanix you require third party tools. VMware vSphere is …
Chose VMware vSphere
Hyperv is great for limited vm build out, low cost companies, and limited in size organizations. Microsoft has a great product but its just not a robust and scalable as vsphere is. Citrix's platform is great for simple virtualization needs and for special 3D graphics …
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere is superior to any other on-premises hypervisor that I've personally used or heard about. vSphere is the de facto industry standard, receives substantially more partner support and investment, and benefits from a significantly longer maturation period than other …
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere provides more control over the Virtualization environment.
It allows users to have great management User Interface with lots of dynamic features.
VM creation.
Chose VMware vSphere
We could not migrate to AOS then due to limitation by SAP supportability. A few months after going live, there was a whitepaper saying that AHV will now support it. We continued to use vSphere. It has given us what we need to be agile and extremely efficient with our hardware …
Chose VMware vSphere
I have never used another product like vSphere.
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere simply is best-in-class for its features and functionality. It does guest OS management, thin provisioning, deployment, management, networking, vMotion, and automation better than all the rest. vSphere is always the first to implement new and advanced features and push …
Chose VMware vSphere
We came from VirtualBox where every user had their own VMs and was responsible for managing them. Turns out that's not a great solution when people leave or when disaster strikes. Further, the performance was abysmal.
Chose VMware vSphere
We have tried a few other virtualization platforms, and even though you do pay for the support, it's worth it for the extra you get. Datastore migration, host migration affinity rules are all tools we use that others don't seem to have. And if they do, they don't work as well.
Chose VMware vSphere
There's no comparison, VMWare is the market leader. It's pricey, but its feature set is years ahead of the competition. In particular, the ability to manage a large fleet of servers across multiple sites through a single pane of glass is great!
Chose VMware vSphere
We have a very small environment of Xenserver.
Chose VMware vSphere
We opted for vSphere because of our IaaS/PaaS provider. Being one of the pioneers in server virtualization, VMware have proven to be quite reliable and robust, and thus widely adopted by virtualization service providers including ours. Also, the price is noticeably lower using …
Chose VMware vSphere
Requires specific set of hardware where VMware works on everything
Chose VMware vSphere
We started testing our virtual infrastructure back 9 years ago we test XenServer but it was too complicated for us. When we tested vSphere from Vmware, It just worked, all we had to do was click. At the time, we were looking to have a virtualized video security server and …
Chose VMware vSphere
I have only used Hyper-V on a workstation. Not to the same standard as VMware. From what I have seen, VMware vSphere console has a whole lot more features but I cannot fully tell you that one is better than the other.
Chose VMware vSphere
I researched on the web and upon stumbling on millions and millions of articles, found that vSphere is a technology that was leading in the magic quadrant at that time. The technology was able to cater to the business needs and requirements for its vision and goals. The …
Chose VMware vSphere
In terms of security, VMware has made important security enhancements, which now provides the same security features and level as Hyper-V. In terms of scalability, VMware improved scalability, which supports up to 64 hosts in the cluster now and it can now accommodate more than …
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere is much easier to use for a larger enterprise and also is easier to set up than Hyper-V. XenServer is simply not popular so while not a bad choice it is not the best because so little will be available for it. I cannot speak to the latest versions of Citrix since I …
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere is superior to Hyper-V. I have had several issues in Hyper-V that I have not experienced in vSphere. vSphere just works. It costs more money, but it works. I am curious to see the outcome of the Microsoft licensing model as they try to take on VMWare with Hyper-V. …
Chose VMware vSphere
It is the best for the value and the main other option is Hyper V.
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere is more robust than VirtualBox and is widely used so VSphere is the product of choice to avoid compatibility issues.
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere has a lot more feature sets than Hyper-V but at a much higher cost of entry versus MS Hyper-V. I have not been able to play with Hyper-V as much as I would have liked, but the setup and ongoing maintenance seems to be easier in vSphere than with Hyper-V
Chose VMware vSphere
vSphere has more functionality than workstation pro and Hyper-v from Microsoft. It is expensive but for a good reason, the amount of control you have with vSphere is amazing. VMware is constantly adding new features and keeps their software up to date. Hyper-V is great but with …
Features
DigitalOcean App PlatformVMware vSphere
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean App Platform
6.8
Ratings
16% below category average
VMware vSphere
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability4.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead4.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control4.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean App Platform
-
Ratings
VMware vSphere
7.2
Ratings
12% below category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DigitalOcean App PlatformVMware vSphere
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.7 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DigitalOcean App PlatformVMware vSphere
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOcean App PlatformVMware vSphere
Likelihood to Recommend
It can help you to host your virtual appliance or serverless application at very low cost. DigitalOcean marketplace also helps you to deploy the serverless app or virtual appliance effortlessly. It is suitable for small-scale deployment and the process to set up an account and rolling out your app via the marketplace is easy and cheap.
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vSphere is well suited for multiple VMWare hosts and can be very useful in larger enterprises where vMotion is used to load balance and failover running virtual machines. In smaller businesses with one or two hosts then the features can be overkill. The addition of virtual TPM support is a very nice addition to provide vm security in a more Microsoft supported methodology.
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Pros
  • Hosting of serverless application
  • Hosting of load balancer
  • Hosting of virtual appliances
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  • Taking Snapshots of VMs and roll back to the previous state when faced with a problem.
  • Template creation - Once you have that perfect template you can easily create new VMs. Very useful feature.
  • VMotion - Being able to perform live migrations of a virtual machine from one physical server to another, without any downtime.
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Cons
  • The company has not been very communicative as of lately. Not much news, no apparent work on missing features.
  • Some components are incomplete as far as some critical features. For example, I use RethinkDB as my database and it's missing critical features like backup and clustering, so It is unusable and they should have made that clear from the get go.
  • The pricing on the support plan is vague. I do have the feeling it is actually well worth the money, but it's hard to form a decisions based without more predictable specific.
  • Seems to me like the platform's future is unclear.
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  • Allow enable EVC without requiring host shutdown
  • More detail in recent tasks. Instead of just showing a task called "Reconfigure virtual machine" also have a link to more detailed information as to what was reconfigured, changed or removed.
  • Allow searching tasks or events
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
We are constantly looking for change that will benefit our company. We are not ones to stick with a product simply because it is what we know, but rather looking for what fits us best. We can't imagine another product on the market today doing a better job of handling our infrastructure than vSphere.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
Very useful for environments where space and energy consumption are issues and management is not very keen on upfront spending on hardware every time whenever requirement comes from any dept for provisioning a machine for their occasional use, easily can be done in case of VMware vSphere in few clicks. Backup, security, monitoring and management everything is covered but at additional cost.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
I rarely ever have to contact support and when I do need to resolve an issue, there is always an abundance of kb articles and research information available that can help quickly resolve the issue. Depending on the type of support contract you have, you may get support from some offshore group in another country and this could be a little challenging because of the language barrier.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Just make sure that when you implement, that the person implementing truly knows what they are doing and has a plan of action coming in. Since our initial implementation using a consulting service, I have implemented a few vSphere just from what I learned at the initial implementation and use over time, and the person implementing really needs to know what they are doing or you will miss out on features that may help you down the line
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Alternatives Considered
The ability to choose your own cloud provider is huge, especially for a small start up like I have. We have a lot of free credit from AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Azure, etc... The data layer is baked into the system which is better for integration then an external provider. There are also a lot fewer differences between environment as everything is Docker based which gives me the confidence that what works on my machine is going to work in production. Heroku doesn't have good support for Docker containers yet and although Heroku has served me well in the past, it is limited in some aspects.
Read full review
vSphere provides more control over the Virtualization environment.
It allows users to have great management User Interface with lots of dynamic features.
VM creation.
Perform vMotion.
Network Management.
Datastore Mangement.
Cluster Management.
Schedule tasks.
Affinity and anti-affinity rules.
Easy to upgrade.
Backup the configuration data which can be restore after a disaster.
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Return on Investment
  • The platform is saving me a lot of time I would have been wasting on operations instead of development.
  • The platform is saving me a lot of money as I can easily switch between cloud providers to find the best price.
  • I am worried though for the price I might have to pay in case of an unexpected system issue.
  • Hopefully I will be able to pay the support plan before that.
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  • Having vSphere helped my business quickly recover from a ransomware attack which would have crippled us for weeks if we were not virtualized. I think the ROI on something like that is immeasurable.
  • vSphere has allowed my company to purchase bigger server hardware to host 3 or 4 virtual servers, which was at a cost much lower than buying 3 or 4 server hardware boxes, saving us thousands each time we need to upgrade hardware.
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ScreenShots