Likelihood to Recommend Amazon AMIs has been very useful for the quick setup and implementation of deep learning for data analysis which is something I have used the service for in my own research. We commonly use the service to enable students to run intensive deep learning algorithms for their assessments. This service works well in this scenario as it allows students to quickly set up a suitable environment and get started with little hassle. If you are looking to run simple, surface level deep learning algorithms (kind of contradictory statement I know) then AMI is more complicated than most will need. When it comes to teaching the basics of Machine Learning, this kind of system is unnecessary and there are other alternatives which can be used. That being said this service is a must if you are looking to run complex deep learning via the cloud.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Setting up environment Support for different types of machines Perfect for Machine Learning / Deep Learning use cases Nvidia / Cuda / Conda support easily Read full review DigitalOcean provides some of the best cost-to-value services available The DigitalOcean cloud console is very intuitive and easy to navigate DigitalOcean has great support for Docker and other dev ops tools like Terraform. DigitalOcean iterates quickly and provides cutting edge features for organizations that want to keep up with the latest and greatest dev ops tooling DigitalOcean has a great developer community and numerous support docs/tutorials Read full review Cons Some aspects of the User Interface are quite confusing and activating packages can be a bit convoluted It can be a bit confusing to switch between frameworks for novice users Read full review 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. Read full review 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 Usability I honestly can't think of an easier way to set up and maintain your own server. Being able to set up a server in minutes and have fully control is awesome. The UX is incredibly intuitive for first-time users as well so there's no reason to be intimidated when it comes to giving DigitalOcean a shot.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
Read full review Performance Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Both of these services provide similar functionality and from my experience both are top class services which cover most of your needs. I think ultimately it comes down to what you need each service for. For example Amazon DL AMIs allows for clustering by default meaning I am able to run several clustering algorithms without a problem whereas IBM Watson Studio doesn't provide this functionality. They both provide a wide range of default packages such as Amazon providing caffe-2 and IBM providing sci-kitlearn. My main point is that both are very good services which have very similar functionality, you just need to think about the costs, suitability of features and integration with other services you are using.
Read full review 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 migrate their backend and other services to AWS as they scale up.
Read full review Scalability Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
Read full review Return on Investment Saves a lot of Infra Costs Saves a lot of time in handling environment issues Easy to start a new instance Read full review With DigitalOcean, I've been able to move all my sites to https using my own implementations of SSL with LetsEncrypt. Since moving my sites to DigitalOcean, my hosting plan costs less than 40% of what I paid for similar hosting from Site5. Read full review ScreenShots