DigitalOcean vs. GoDaddy

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
GoDaddy
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
GoDaddy Web Hosting provides users with storage, email addresses, and unlimited bandwith.
$6.99
per month with an annual term
Pricing
DigitalOceanGoDaddy
Editions & Modules
1GB-16GB
$5.00
Starting Price Per Month
8GB-160GB
$60.00
Starting Price Per Month
Basic
as low as $6.99
per month with an annual term
Basic
as low as $10.49
per month with an annual term
Premium
as low as $13.49
per month with an annual term
Commerce
as low as $14.99
per month with an annual term
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DigitalOceanGoDaddy
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsDiscounts available for annual subscription.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DigitalOceanGoDaddy
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 …
GoDaddy
Chose GoDaddy
GoDaddy is simple to use the platform that's why I elected the GoDaddy platform.
Chose GoDaddy
We haven't really considered any others. GoDaddy has been our go to for hosting and domain registration needs.
Chose GoDaddy
Their backend is terrible as compared to Godaddy , also HostGator is slow as compared to Godaddy .I would like to also tell HostGator services are not good as compared to Godaddy , which included hosting , domain name , website builder , also many many more.
Chose GoDaddy
SoftLayer and HighVelocity are better in terms of advanced web hosting and dedicated hosting than GoDaddy in my opinion. GoDaddy's main business is domain hosting and basic web hosting and GoDaddy is better at it in my opinion. Amazon Route 53 provides simple domain and web …
Chose GoDaddy
GoDaddy is able to be integrated from these various platforms. I haven't used much of other services such as Host Gator, but GoDaddy's relative ease of use makes it a relatively simple platform for your small business needs. It does not quite plug and play, but it's not too far …
Chose GoDaddy
Best customer service and fees when first becoming a client. Very helpful, supportive, and full of kindness when making website hosting changes. Follow up and good product offering. When I called to begin using the service they were helpful and switched it over for me at no fee …
Chose GoDaddy
GoDaddy's website builder is more robust than these other website hosting sites. I have used many different platforms, and GoDaddy is easier, faster, and more efficient in getting a website up and running, as well as maintaining it for a business that wants to grow. I am …
Chose GoDaddy
I found Squarespace to be pretty user-unfriendly compared to GoDaddy. Their sites were hard to update and looked cheap.
Chose GoDaddy
Whenever new clients come to me for website development, I begin our relationship by asking about domain registration and website hosting. I cringe when they say they use GoDaddy and often warn them that additional time and effort may be required to accomplish their goals. …
Chose GoDaddy
Flywheel and WP Engine are both more expensive but they offer more bells and whistles if you need them. I think WP Engine recently bought Flywheel so their services are very similar. GoDaddy offers more standard options that are more affordable. Network Solutions is slightly …
Chose GoDaddy
For my own business website I did switch to BigCommerce because they offered features that weren't available at the time with Go Daddy, such as sales tax rates for every city/state, and products were limited to I think 10 or 20 options at the time and I needed 100+ options for …
Chose GoDaddy
GoDaddy has gotten too big for themselves. They have gone very corporate, you can't really get support as easily as you used to, and their pricing is ridiculous. Not to mention they sneak things into your cart during the checkout process and reel you in with introductory …
Chose GoDaddy
We use GoDaddy because of institutional inertia. To be honest, most of the big-name registrars and web hosts out there are pretty terrible and suffer from the same issues with transfers, uptime, and support. I want to try evaluating more alternatives soon, but honestly, the …
Chose GoDaddy
We had considered wix before selecting GoDaddy, however, it did not seem as easy to use, especially the website templates. The features we needed for the company website were not all readily available in wix, so we finally chose Godaddy & WordPress hosting for the website. The …
Chose GoDaddy
Pricing was just better and domains are simple to keep organized.
Chose GoDaddy
We had used a few different platforms in the past, including Wix and Squarespace. These alternative platforms offered much more robust design elements that were more customizable and attractive, by far. These platforms weren't as cost-effective for our organization and didn't …
Chose GoDaddy
GoDaddy works well with Wordpress and many Wordpress plugins. GoDaddy has fast page loading speeds and experienced customer service. The price is fair for anyone looking to begin a blog or website and doesn't want to invest too much in hosting.
Chose GoDaddy
We are only now shopping around for an alternative, and have considered a local provider most seriously, but so far, no move is planned. GoDaddy is good enough as-is - we will see if we choose to step away from it, in favor of better support, less errors and more up time.
So …
Chose GoDaddy
GoDaddy compares well to other options and the tool used for building or updating the site content is relatively easy to use and problem-free. WordPress may have more options as far as templates are concerned, and we sometimes run into those constraints with GoDaddy as far as …
Chose GoDaddy
With GoDaddy: I can always expect that their support will be helpful and positive.
  • That I can reach operators by phone or chat
  • That I can find my domains and host in one place.
  • That I can also purchase and access email for myself and my team.
Chose GoDaddy
I looked at several website builder options. Some looked good complicated, most were too expensive, then I found GoDaddy Web Builder and I loved the pricing, the functionality, and the variety of styles and options. It’s as easy as building a scrapbook page. I have shared it …
Features
DigitalOceanGoDaddy
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
GoDaddy
-
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
DigitalOceanGoDaddy
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
10Web
10Web
Score 5.1 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DigitalOceanGoDaddy
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOceanGoDaddy
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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I have purchased domains through a few different sites over the years and the ones I purchased from other companies, I always had issues with. The ones I have purchased through GoDaddy were no problem at all. They have easy help pages that helps you set up step-by-step no matter where you will use your domain. I now only purchase them from GoDaddy. They also have coupon codes where you can sometimes get them for 99 cents, especially if you are a new user.
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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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  • Customer service is definitely number one here. The fact that they are open for calls 24/7 and have a great support team is a really nice thing to have when you aren't fully versed in all things domains/cpanel/email etc. They also usually answer quickly.
  • Ease of use throughout the website. It's made for the non web savvy individual, clear and instructive for proper usage.
  • I think they know their target market well and it's nice to see that their website shows just that.
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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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  • Support agents are woefully undertrained, even in knowledge of their own products.
  • Support agents will always try to upsell you, even when you're dealing with an urgent, high-impact issue.
  • There's no guarantee of uptime, and there will often be gaps in service as part of normal procedures.
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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!
Read full review
GoDaddy is the number one player in town. They have the most competitive and best pricing on everything from domain name registration to hosting packages that are very affordable. But of course due to inflation and everything going up in price today GoDaddy has raised their rates but nothing ever comes back down.
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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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Some integration could be much cleaner and smoother. Seems it used to be easier. Plus, they took away the catch all email feature.
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Reliability and Availability
Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
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They are also available. They never have any outages or anything that I've yet to experience.
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Performance
Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
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Like I said before they are the BEST! nothing slows them down.
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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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I think a lot of companies can learn from GoDaddy's support team. I have found:
  • Chat or phone support is almost always available.
  • Their agents are friendly and helpful.
  • Their agents seem to care and be knowledgeable about a wide range of issues.
  • I rarely have to escalate my problem to get the support that I need.
  • If they can't help me, then they can tell me why something is happening and direct me to resources that can fix my problem.
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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.
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GoDaddy is able to be integrated from these various platforms. I haven't used much of other services such as Host Gator, but GoDaddy's relative ease of use makes it a relatively simple platform for your small business needs. It does not quite plug and play, but it's not too far off, either.
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Scalability
Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
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Their customer service is easily reachable. Someone is always available to help you at any given time 24 hours a day. They are simply the best in the whole wide world. They have the best engineers and support team. Whatever I need they are there to help and assist along the way every time.
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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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  • Definitely a positive ROI because we are able to have a website to get information out there in addition to our social media pages. It brings everything together in one place. Companies with websites are way more credible than those without.
  • We are planning on hosting our online store through GoDaddy, as well, which will also increase our ROI.
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ScreenShots