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Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) vs. DigitalOcean Droplets

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon S3

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AAmazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.N/A

    DigitalOcean Droplets

    Score9.7 out of 10
    N/ADigitalOcean'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 S3DigitalOcean Droplets
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    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 S3DigitalOcean 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
    Amazon S3DigitalOcean Droplets
    Considered Both Products
    Amazon AWS
    Chose Amazon S3
    We had already decided to use Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) for other compute services, so it made sense to use Amazon for blob storage as well. By using the same cloud vendor, we can more easily integrate between AWS services like Cloudfront. Blob storage is essentially a …
    Incentivized
    DigitalOcean
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    39 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    40 Answers
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Features
    Amazon S3DigitalOcean Droplets
    Data Center Backup
    Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and DigitalOcean Droplets
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    8.6
    11 Ratings
    0% above category average
    DigitalOcean Droplets
    -
    Ratings
    Universal recovery8.410 Ratings00 Ratings
    Instant recovery8.310 Ratings00 Ratings
    Recovery verification8.47 Ratings00 Ratings
    Business application protection8.57 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple backup destinations8.210 Ratings00 Ratings
    Incremental backup identification9.14 Ratings00 Ratings
    Backup to the cloud8.511 Ratings00 Ratings
    Deduplication and file compression9.05 Ratings00 Ratings
    Snapshots8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    Flexible deployment9.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management dashboard7.610 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform support8.510 Ratings00 Ratings
    Retention options9.17 Ratings00 Ratings
    Encryption9.58 Ratings00 Ratings
    Enterprise Backup
    Comparison of Enterprise Backup features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and DigitalOcean Droplets
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    8.5
    11 Ratings
    0% below category average
    DigitalOcean Droplets
    -
    Ratings
    Continuous data protection9.510 Ratings00 Ratings
    Replication8.410 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operational reporting and analytics7.811 Ratings00 Ratings
    Malware protection8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-location capabilities8.511 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ransomware Recovery8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and DigitalOcean Droplets
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    -
    Ratings
    DigitalOcean Droplets
    8.8
    1 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon S3DigitalOcean Droplets
    Small Businesses
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    Score8.7 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Carbonite by OpenText
    Score7.1 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Druva Security Cloud
    Score9.4 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon S3DigitalOcean Droplets
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.7
    (77 ratings)
    10.0
    (8 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.6
    (15 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.8
    (21 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon S3DigitalOcean Droplets
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon S3 is a great service to safely backup your data where redundancy is guaranteed and the cost is fair. We use Amazon S3 for data that we backup and hope we never need to access but in the case of a catastrophic or even small slip of the finger with the delete command we know our data and our client's data is safely backed up by Amazon S3. Transferring data into Amazon S3 is free but transferring data out has an associated, albeit low, cost per GB. This needs to be kept in mind if you plan on transferring out a lot of data frequently. There may be other cost effective options although Amazon S3 prices are really low per GB. Transferring 150TB would cost approximately $50 per month.
    Incentivized
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    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • Fantastic developer API, including AWS command line and library utilities.
    • Strong integration with the AWS ecosystem, especially with regards to access permissions.
    • It's astoundingly stable- you can trust it'll stay online and available for anywhere in the world.
    • Its static website hosting feature is a hidden gem-- it provides perhaps the cheapest, most stable, most high-performing static web hosting available in PaaS.
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • Web console can be very confusing and challenging to use, especially for new users
    • Bucket policies are very flexible, but the composability of the security rules can be very confusing to get right, often leading to security rules in use on buckets other than what you believe they are
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    Due to princing, availability and scalability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    It is tricky to get it all set up correctly with policies and getting the IAM settings right. There is also a lot of lifecycle config you can do in terms of moving data to cold/glacier storage. It is also not to be confused with being a OneDrive or SharePoint replacement, they each have their own place in our environment, and S3 is used more by the IT team and accessed by our PHP applications. It is not necessarily used by an average everyday user for storing their pictures or documents, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    AWS has always been quick to resolve any support ticket raised. S3 is no exception. We have only ever used it once to get a clarification regarding the costs involved when data is transferred between S3 and other AWS services or the public internet. We got a response from AWS support team within a day.
    Incentivized
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    DigitalOcean
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    Overall, we found that Amazon S3 provided a lot of backend features Google Cloud Storage (GCS) simply couldn't compare to. GCS was way more expensive and really did not live up to it. In terms of setup, Google Cloud Storage may have Amazon S3 beat, however, as it is more of a pseudo advanced version of Google Drive, that was not a hard feat for it to achieve. Overall, evaluating GCS, in comparison to S3, was an utter disappointment.
    Incentivized
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    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.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • It practically eliminated some real heavy storage servers from our premises and reduced maintenance cost.
    • The excellent durability and reliability make sure the return of money you invested in.
    • If the objects which are not active or stale, one needs to remove them. Those objects keep adding cost to each billing cycle. If you are handling a really big infrastructure, sometimes this creates quite a huge bill for preserving un-necessary objects/documents.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots