Amazon Lightsail vs. DigitalOcean App Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Lightsail
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) designed to present an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan.
$3.50
per month
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
Pricing
Amazon LightsailDigitalOcean App Platform
Editions & Modules
512 MB Linux
$3.50
per month
1 GB Linux
$5.00
per month
2 GB Linux
$10.00
per month
Basic
$5
per month
Professional
$12
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon LightsailDigitalOcean App Platform
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon LightsailDigitalOcean App Platform
Features
Amazon LightsailDigitalOcean App Platform
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
8.8
6 Ratings
7% above category average
DigitalOcean App Platform
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling5.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation10.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
-
Ratings
DigitalOcean App Platform
6.8
2 Ratings
13% below category average
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings4.02 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings4.02 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings4.02 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings6.02 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon LightsailDigitalOcean App Platform
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon LightsailDigitalOcean App Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(6 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon LightsailDigitalOcean App Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We utilized Amazon Lightsail to get a web application proof of concept up and running. It's easy to set up, requires minimal configuration, and lets us to concentrate on the coding. It's designed to help you get started fast and easily, but it's not designed for corporate applications or workloads.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
I would only get into it if I where willing to pay for the support plan and getting some assurances from the team as to where they are headed. The platform itself is great and can save you a ton of hard work and money. but it's hard to be confidant in it's sustainability.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Its provide pre configured Apps and operating system
  • Very easy to use interface and the cost is also very low
  • Integration with other AWS services like route53, S3 etc
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • Hosting of serverless application
  • Hosting of load balancer
  • Hosting of virtual appliances
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • slow
  • complex integration to AWS Cloudwatch - complex setup required
  • No IPv6, a big downside
  • less value compared with Linode or Digital Ocean
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • 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.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
My overall experience with Amazon Lightsail is very good, and the online community of Lightsail users is very large and its helps to resolve any kind of issue i faced on my server. I also like the integration of other AWS services with Amazon Lightsail like we can export our Lightsail instance into ec2 server using snapshots.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality assurance tasks, and provide much more efficient and better apps with our microservices architecture.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
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 roll out your app via marketplace is easy and cheap.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Hosting a production application on Lightsail will guarantee you a loss
  • Saved lots of time for our prototyping
  • Other VPS providers are better
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots