DigitalOcean vs. DigitalOcean Droplets

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
DigitalOcean
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
DigitalOcean is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform from the company of the same name headquartered in New York. It is known for its support of managed Kubernetes clusters and “droplets” feature.
$5
Starting Price Per Month
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
DigitalOcean's Droplets is designed to help the user spin up a virtual machine in just 55 seconds. Standard, General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, or Memory-Optimized configurations provide flexibility to build, test, and grow an app from startup to scale.
$4
per month
Pricing
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean Droplets
Editions & Modules
1GB-16GB
$5.00
Starting Price Per Month
8GB-160GB
$60.00
Starting Price Per Month
Basic
$4
per month
CPU-Optimized
$42
per month
General Purpose
$63
per month
Memory-Optimized
$84
per month
Storage-Optimized
$131
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean Droplets
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for DigitalOcean Droplets varies depending on the size of the virtual environment and the associated data needs.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean Droplets
Considered Both Products
DigitalOcean
Chose DigitalOcean
The target segment of DigitalOcean is application developers and small teams working in startups for easily configuring and deploying infrastructure in the cloud. We selected DigitalOcean for some of our usecases as it is cost effective and easy to integrate with compared to …
Chose DigitalOcean
Simple, and quick setup, competitive pricing as well as geographically you can choose the location of the datacenter. The setup of the machine with RAM / CPU and SDD gives all options, it is just what we always needed and find our self very well with such type of service by …
Chose DigitalOcean
I chose DigitalOcean over Oracle Cloud because it's simpler, more cost-effective, and quicker to deploy. DigitalOcean’s intuitive interface allows me to manage servers easily, while Oracle Cloud is more complex and suited for larger enterprises. Also, DigitalOcean’s transparent …
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is an inexpensive product as compared to other products available in the market. The UI is easy and the beginner can also understand the UI with the step by step guide. It provides a lot of custom features and the user needs to pay only for what they are using. …
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is really one of the cheapest options out there for dedicated servers. Plus, their pay-per-use pricing helps companies to grow at their own pace without having to pay for a higher performance or service they don't need initially. Their platform is well built and …
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is an easier and cheaper way to [set up] new machines. The UX is really good and it's easy to find what you need. Competition offer[s] a complicated way to manage machines and the cost is sometimes more than [...] double of what DigitalOcean offer[s]. However[,] …
Chose DigitalOcean
As I have said, DigitalOcean was slightly more expensive than something like HostGator, but the amount of customization and quality of service make it worth any difference. AWS was always a pain to set up and use, but DigitalOcean makes it cake.
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is not quite as simple as Heroku to get up and running, but it provides a better price point and more configurability. However, in my opinion it's much simpler to get up and running with than AWS Opsworks and even Google App Engine. It also provides a better price …
Chose DigitalOcean
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Heroku Platform and Google Compute Engine
Chose DigitalOcean
Digital Ocean is easier to start with and was a great choice for that project. On other projects, I may choose Google Cloud products because of their more complex product offerings and advanced features.
Products like Storage or Pub/Sub isn't available on Digital Ocean and the …
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean can be seen more like a Rackspace or a similar provider. They aren't offering more extended services such as AWS Redshift of something on a larger scale. They are great for just vanilla virtualization and maintaining uptime for those resources across a large set of …
Chose DigitalOcean
Amazon has a very complex UI and many products to offer. They haven't polished up their UI and it has a much greater learning curve compared to DigitalOcean. However, Amazon Web Services (AWS) does have more comprehensive cloud computing services, which forces some companies to …
Chose DigitalOcean
Initially we started using DigitalOcean due to their pricing point as we were in development phase. Slowly when we used it, we starting liking it a lot as it is very fast & easy to get started, compared to the other Cloud Providers we've used. Also they have blogs and …
Chose DigitalOcean
Site5's customer service and support have declined over the recent years. The last couple of tickets that I submitted in 2016 were never addressed by their help team. The only customer service agent seems to be on their Twitter account. Site5 does not allow any configuration of …
Chose DigitalOcean
Vultr is a new player in the game. They don't advertise their hardware model and for that reason, people may not trust them. I have run few benchmarks on Vultr, they performed slightly better than DigitalOcean but they aren't trustworthy. Their transparency index is very low …
Chose DigitalOcean
Compared service to service, Digitalocean comes out on top usually, for smaller better spec servers. This is what they do, and specialty shops are always the best route, with no exception here. However, if you need more than a server, or are not comfortable doing more than …
Chose DigitalOcean
Cheaper than Heroku which is prohibitively expensive for a small self-funded startup. We quickly outgrew their free tier and migrated to DigitalOcean. AWS is more feature complete however, we found its maintenance overly confusing and not as well thought out. For many use cases …
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean has a much lower price point for VPS - but they are not fully managed as with other services. DigitalOcean VPSs are good for quick simple applications that we are comfortable and efficient at deploying ourselves. We do not generally recommend them for clients, as …
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean isn't nearly as robust as Google Cloud. DigitalOcean provides VPSs, as does Google Cloud. However, Google Cloud offers many other products as well.

ChunkHost is very similar to DigitalOcean, but doesn't have the infrastructure that DigitalOcean has. Geographical …
Chose DigitalOcean
AWS: Too complex to set things up. Period.
Mediatemple: Great features, services and customer service. Prices are a bit high for what they offer.
Linode: Outstanding features and customer support. Difficult to start with for novice users.
Chose DigitalOcean
My cost savings were significant and I felt like I was much more in control of the hardware and processes. I also had issues with certain marketing decisions my former hosting company made, DigitalOcean was an easy choice!
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean's dead simple pricing and solid but basic feature set combine for a no-nonsense way to get your product shipped. Its API makes it nicely scriptable/automate-able compared to traditional shared hosting providers like Dreamhost. I think it compares most closely with …
Chose DigitalOcean
Linode was my long time go-to and we still have several sites hosted and maintained on their servers. Initially, I was skeptical of DigitalOcean's pricing, but they've proven to be an excellent alternative. Linode is more mature in their toolset, but both are really great …
DigitalOcean Droplets
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
Vultr had better performance in some instances but overall the dashboard was a mess to use a lot of times. When you zoom out from server performance and price, DigitalOcean offered more useful features, and the API was more consistent in some of the use cases we needed.
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
Cost is much lesser
Interface is very easy to use
Documentation is readily available for most of the usecases.
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
The reason for selecting digital ocean was since we require a cloud solution for testing applications internally without being bothered about servers needing to be deployed in different geographical locations. As Droplets can be deployed very easily and boot faster than any …
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets has more advanced options and the devs at our team are extremely geeky and they prefer to have full control on the server via SSH rather than cPanel.
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets is continuously evolving to be more and more powerful. It has great features and has low cost options, which is really great for developers. Its CDN, Loadbalancer, etc. make it a good place to host a high-traffic application. Moroever, DigitalOcean …
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
Both Linode and DigitalOcean Droplets perform about the same and cost about the same. However we prefer the DigitalOcean Droplets interface, and the Cloud Firewall service is a must for us.
Features
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean Droplets
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean
8.3
Ratings
3% above category average
DigitalOcean Droplets
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean Droplets
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
DigitalOcean is a powerful tool with respect to the services and pricing that it offers. It is easier than other products and also provides servers that are inexpensive with great performance. DigitalOcean also offers additional add-ons such as additional IP addresses, scheduling of backups, etc. One of the best advantages is that it is efficient and is open source. Although, it is suited for a firm that is looking to cut down cost. Also, it is not suited for an organization where the dev/platform/DBA team is less experienced.
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There are some other platforms that compete with DigitalOcean Droplets that have more performant servers for a very minimal price decrease. However, DigitalOcean's servers still have great performance, and the experience is better when you consider the developer console, managed options, and uptime that DigitalOcean offers. DigitalOcean is the better all-around package.
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Pros
  • Ease of use - You can get set up with a new server in a matter of minutes. It doesn't get any easier than that.
  • Support - The public forums are incredibly helpful as are the official help articles. I've never needed to contact the support team because of this. All of the information is at my fingertips.
  • Pricing - We're only paying $10/mo for a solution that gives our customers more confidence in us and is a selling point for us.
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  • Simplicity to scale services--the interface is very quick and effective to use
  • Reliability--this is key for us, as any downtime effects our reputation
  • Keeps the costs down--hosting our own equivalent infrastructure would cost a lot more
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Cons
  • Some products/services available on other Cloud providers aren't available, but they seem to be catching up as they add new products like Managed SQL DBs.
  • While they have FreeBSD droplets (VMs), support for *BSD OSs is limited. I.e. the new monitoring agent only works on Linux.
  • There are no regions available on South America.
  • They don't seem to offer enterprise-level products, even basic ones as Windows Server, MS SQL Server, Oracle products, etc.
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  • In terms of an availability zone, they have limitations not available in most of the geographical locations.
  • No live support is available which can cause problem if you have outage.
  • Number of service is quite limited.
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Likelihood to Renew
I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
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No answers on this topic
Usability
With DigitalOcean it is very easy to start up a server/droplet. They have several templates and server images to select from, and they have good instructions on how to get a server set up and started. The monitoring tools in the dashboard look good and are easy to understand.
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Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
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Reliability and Availability
Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
They have always been fast, and the process has been straight-forward. I haven't had to use it enough to be frustrated with it, to be honest, and when I have an issue they fix it. As with all support, I wish it felt more human, but they are doing aces.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
I chose DigitalOcean over Oracle Cloud because it's simpler, more cost-effective, and quicker to deploy. DigitalOcean’s intuitive interface allows me to manage servers easily, while Oracle Cloud is more complex and suited for larger enterprises. Also, DigitalOcean’s transparent pricing helps control costs, unlike Oracle’s more intricate and complex pricing model.
Read full review
DigitalOcean Droplets has more advanced options and the devs at our team are extremely geeky and they prefer to have full control on the server via SSH rather than cPanel.
Read full review
Scalability
Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • DigitalOcean has very competitive egress pricing, which has been positive for reducing our costs when running services with a large amounts of data transfer
  • DigitalOcean templates have helped us quickly launch services that would otherwise require a lot of configuration (saving time)
  • We haven't had much in the way of negative ROI impacts using DigitalOcean as we don't use it extensively for our core product, but based on personal project experience it can require more engineering time to get up and running with than some other infrastructure services like Heroku. This has been one of the greatest barriers in pushing its adoption in our organization.
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  • Digital Ocean has been great helping us move web apps to the cloud
  • Digital Ocean has been really helpful when hiring contractors
  • The interface could use some work, but overall its not terrible
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ScreenShots