Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) vs. DigitalOcean Droplets

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
The Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) provides a simple, scalable, elastic file system for Linux-based workloads for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources.
$0.04
per GB
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 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
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Editions & Modules
US East & West Region
$0.043
per month per GB (One zone)
Europe (Ireland) Region
$0.046
per month per GB (One zone)
Asia Pacific & Canada Region
$0.047
per month per GB (One zone)
Africa (Cape Town) Region
$0.054
per month per GB (One zone)
AWS GovCloud (US-East)
$0.056
per month per GB (One zone)
US East & West Region
$0.08
per month per GB (Standard)
Asia Pacific & Canada Region
$0.09
per month per GB (Standard)
Europe (Ireland) Region
$0.09
per month per GB (Standard)
Africa (Cape Town) Region
$0.10
per month per GB (Standard)
AWS GovCloud (US-East)
$0.11
per month per GB (Standard)
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
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no minimum fee or setup charge. You pay only for the storage you use, for read and write access to data stored in Infrequent Access storage classes, and for any provisioned throughput. Amazon EFS offers four storage classes: two standard storage classes, including Amazon EFS Standard and Amazon EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (EFS Standard-IA), and two One Zone storage classes, including Amazon EFS One Zone and Amazon EFS One Zone-Infrequent AccessPricing for DigitalOcean Droplets varies depending on the size of the virtual environment and the associated data needs.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Features
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
8.8
5 Ratings
7% above category average
DigitalOcean Droplets
8.8
1 Ratings
7% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.05 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Dynamic scaling10.05 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Elastic load balancing10.04 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Pre-configured templates4.04 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.55 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images7.03 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Operating system support9.55 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Security controls10.05 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Automation10.04 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 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 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(5 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
While the idea is to utilize it enterprise wide; it sometimes doesn't work well in smaller applications and that causes slowdowns and impacts productivity. Also when evaluating EFS versus EBS - one needs to look at cost as EFS is a lot more expensive to implement and run so you need to weigh cost benefits of both systems and choose the best for you.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Droplets are the best choice for developers teams that need reliable Linux servers to deploy their projects, the ability to create a droplet for testing purposes then destroy it, and only get charged for the few hours used makes the chances of messing up very slim. DigitalOcean Droplets is a great solution because the servers are scalable and the process of adding more resources like CPU or RAM to an existing droplet takes only a few minutes and once a server is scaled up it can also be scaled down if necessary which is perfect for supporting a temporary peak in traffic for example.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • This is very easy to setup and has a great performance.
  • As per the name, Elastic grows as your data grows.
  • We can run multiple EC2 instances.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • 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
Amazon AWS
  • For early age start it would be costly
  • Not necessary for small scale system, but very beneficial for system which have high TPS and huge user base
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • 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.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
DigitalOcean
Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
The documentation is sufficient for setting up and it is basic NFS for mounting so not much support is required. I have not had any issues to warrant a request with AWS support.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
EFS is easier to configure, no need for Active Directory.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
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 Droplets has a nonprofit program that helps nonprofit sites to run their infrastructure, which is tremendous and no competitor of DigitalOcean Droplets does that.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Cost is always a paramount issue when looking at ROI
  • It is fast and if that's what you need for your implementation - you probably will not find a better solution
  • Expertise in EFS is sometimes hard to come by so it's best to look at your employee's ability to grasp this technology. Otherwise, it's a pretty steep learning curve.
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DigitalOcean
  • 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
Read full review
ScreenShots