Amazon Web Services vs. DigitalOcean Droplets vs. Vultr

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Web Services
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.
$0
per month
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.6 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
Vultr
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Vultr is an independent cloud computing platform on a mission to provide businesses and developers around the world with unrivaled ease of use, price-to-performance, and global reach.
$1
per month
Pricing
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean DropletsVultr
Editions & Modules
Free Tier
$0
per month
Basic Environment
$100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment
$250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment
$600-$2500
per month
Basic
$4
per month
CPU-Optimized
$42
per month
General Purpose
$63
per month
Memory-Optimized
$84
per month
Storage-Optimized
$131
per month
Block Storage
$1
per month
Cloud Compute
$2.50
per month
Object Storage
$5
per month
Kubernetes Engine
$10
per month
Load Balancers
$10
per month
Managed Databases
$15
per month
Optimized Cloud Compute
$28
per month
Cloud GPU
$90
per month
Bare Metal
$120
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean DropletsVultr
Free Trial
YesNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.Pricing for DigitalOcean Droplets varies depending on the size of the virtual environment and the associated data needs.Pricing is based on specifications chosen in each product category. Bandwidth is also included up to a certain amount per month.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean DropletsVultr
Considered Multiple Products
Amazon Web Services
Chose Amazon Web Services
In my personal experience, AWS is superior to both GCP and Azure in the majority of usable applications. GCP suffers from the near total misunderstanding of how support system is even supposed to work, and while _some_ services are pretty nifty and well-polished, some are …
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS stands out in its ability to adapt technology more quickly. All the new features, first adapted by AWS, make it the market leader. The key metrics, such as MTTR, are among the best among all other cloud service providers. The AWS dashboard and analytics features are very …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services Lambda supports more triggers, richer language/runtime support, and has tighter integrations with Amazon Web Services, as compared to Azure/Google Cloud functions.Amazon Web Services also has better global infrastructure, with 33 regions and 105 availability …
Chose Amazon Web Services
We tried various other cloud providers and features provided by them.
Many of the cloud providers have similar features but there are few factors which make Amazon Web Services cloud as preferable choice of our bank are cost, location of Amazon Web Services datacenter where it …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Apart from Amazon Web Services, we use Microsoft Azure in some of our projects. I have some basic experience in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as well. If given a choice, I would prefer using Amazon Web Services over Azure or GCP. I find provisioning of resources relatively faster …
Chose Amazon Web Services
we feel that Azure is a little more clunky and not as user friendly as the AWS model.
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services is better among all of them due to its performance, stability, security and navigation. It effectively saves the cost and provides better facilities than the other competitors. It plays great role when it comes to user friendly interface. It also provided …
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS has the largest market share and most established and over 200 services for diverse needs. AWS has a very power user interface and pay as you go work well that others. AWS has the by far largest network of data centers for low latency and high availability. The regular …
Chose Amazon Web Services

Better global availability and use across industries.
AWS has a great ecosystem of experts, developers, solution architects and it helps to get to know them at various AWS events across the world
Chose Amazon Web Services
Ive only used amazon web services for cloud computing, and the decision was made by the CTO.
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services is much more mature than all of the cloud service providers out in the market. It has 300+ services that solve almost all of your cloud problems.
Chose Amazon Web Services
Compared to other providers like Google Cloud Platform(GCP) and Microsoft Azure, [Amazon Web Services] has a wider range of services, which help you easier implement the solution you want. Also, they have been in the market for more years than their competitors. Moreover, they …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon SageMaker is being extensively used by our R&D department for machine learning models development and research purposes. We work in Jupyter notebooks hosted on SageMaker notebook instances rather than notebooks hosted in local machines by doing so most ML algorithms …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Terrible. Same as above.
Chose Amazon Web Services
I feel AWS usage of services by global clients has been the most compared to Azure or Openshift.
AWS service offering's and usage are economical and much more secured. Its has build an ecosystem of providing all the services capabilities under one umbrella . It provides …
Chose Amazon Web Services
The decision was made to go with AWS because of name recognition and familiarity by contractors we hired. I checked out Google Compute Engine a few years ago, and it did have similar option set, however Google in general was behind Amazon's offerings.
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services fits best for all levels of organisations like startup, mid level or enterprise. The services are easy to use and doesn't require a high level of understanding as you can learn via blogs or youtube videos. AWS is Reasonable in cost as the plan is pay as you …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services is well suited when we have a huge amount of data to store, process, manipulate and get meaningful information out of. It is also suitable when we need very fast data retrieval from the database. They provide a superior product at a fair price which allows …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Both the services are in the field for quite sometime. And the biggest competitor of Amazon Web Services is Microsoft Azure. Though, Azure easily connects with Microsoft services like a jelly, even in AWS its so easy. And the best thing is due to its vast variety community …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services has a much more seasoned and known set of tools. The learning resources and documentation is much more prevalent and applicable to more scenarios which definitely helps with implementation. Google cloud does offer comparable products, and the user interface …
Chose Amazon Web Services
We evaluated Google Cloud and Azure at the beginning of our cloud journey but at that time, AWS was so far ahead of the other public cloud providers that there was no question about whether or not to go with AWS. They have the broadest catalog of services and their support is …
Chose Amazon Web Services
We have investigated Azure as well, for this specific need it made the most sense to go with [Amazon Web Services], the design was much simpler to get going. We have also used Azure for some of the other deployments that we have done with SaaS systems. These are the two …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Our tech team was comfortable with Amazon Web Services and that is why we started with Amazon Web Services. In the meantime, we searched for other services like Amazon Web Services but it seems that facilities like Elastic Bean and the first year free made us stick to Amazon …
DigitalOcean Droplets
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
Vultr had better performance in some instances but overall the dashboard was a mess to use a lot of times. When you zoom out from server performance and price, DigitalOcean offered more useful features, and the API was more consistent in some of the use cases we needed.
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
Cost is much lesser
Interface is very easy to use
Documentation is readily available for most of the usecases.
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
The reason for selecting digital ocean was since we require a cloud solution for testing applications internally without being bothered about servers needing to be deployed in different geographical locations. As Droplets can be deployed very easily and boot faster than any …
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets has more advanced options and the devs at our team are extremely geeky and they prefer to have full control on the server via SSH rather than cPanel.
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
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 …
Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
Both Linode and DigitalOcean Droplets perform about the same and cost about the same. However we prefer the DigitalOcean Droplets interface, and the Cloud Firewall service is a must for us.
Vultr
Chose Vultr
Price to performance ratio and ease of managemenated
Chose Vultr
Cost of bandwidth and network quality for us is what mattered.
Chose Vultr
Vultr is cheaper than most providers. Only contabo is cheaper, but they have lower uptime.
Chose Vultr
Vultr comes in at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of the breadth of the services they provide compared to the larger vendors, but they are consistently demonstrating their commitment to growing their service offering and platform features. We selected Vultr because of …
Chose Vultr
Vultr has a greater offering of servers whilst staying reasonably priced compared to some of the larger infrastructure providers. They may not have all the services as some of the other providers but they don't need it when they can do what they do with the services they provide.
Chose Vultr
Hetzner has no managed service, and EKS was roughly twice the price.
Chose Vultr
On shared services, such as VPS, I have noticed greater confidence of usability and resource availability with Vultr.
Chose Vultr
We did extensive performance comparisons and testing and Vultr was not only better priced, but much better on the performance and speed.
Chose Vultr
AWS and Azure are too complicated and costly for small businesses like ours.
Chose Vultr
Vultr has better support and competitive pricing. The network is solid and globally deployed. IP reputation is clean, and security is tight. Ease of use and documentation is really good. User experience has been the best I ever experienced. Low stress, reliable …
Chose Vultr
The performance beats upcloud. The only thing I really liked about upcloud better was the backup offerings. They had more flexible backup plans, but I love the every other night plan on Vultr as well.
Chose Vultr
AWS and Google Cloud are great platforms, but the price is complex and their VMs are rather expensive for what they are. I believe these services may be better for more mission critical servers or taking advantage of being able to use their cloud servers rather than just run a …
Chose Vultr
Server updates are clear and always noticed on the platform which my last company did not have clear.
Chose Vultr
CloudCo was not listed. In comparison, the pricing of the competition is in a place where I wouldn't retain any margin for smaller customers, that's why I use Vultr for those. Vultr's self serve interface and UI is much better and more customizable for the general architect. If …
Chose Vultr
Vultr has been a more cost effective solution in some areas. Compared to AWS EC2, Vultr has been a lot more cost effective for our environment. Vultr has the right vCPU, RAM, and storage for our needs. In the object storage space, Vultr has not been the best fit for our …
Chose Vultr
Vultr offers the same services as all the major cloud providers however Vulr offers a clear pricing modeling with no hidden fees. This has been incisive in deciding which provider to go with. I have never encountered any downtime with their services Technically, Vultr has the …
Chose Vultr
Incredible performance to cost ratio. I absolutely love Vultr for minimizing costs associated with running a one-man operation.
Chose Vultr
They are very similar but we are more comfortable with Vultr
Chose Vultr
From the perspective of the above, Vultr provides the best balance of cost vs. performance for us. Cloudways stacks a large fee for each VPS you spin up, and this quickly escalates. Linode comes closest (at least when I used it a few years ago) to Vultr, and 3 years ago this …
Chose Vultr
Vultr is much easier to get started with, less things to configure, a simpler interface. To deploy and manage a server is much easier. I am sure for a production SaaS app there are features in AWS and Azure that are needed, but for dev/test environment, I prefer Vultr.
Chose Vultr
It is reliable, stable and very manageable, but, I think, very expensive too
Chose Vultr
Vultr is a dream to use after coming from AWS - the products are intuitively named, don't require gaining a certification to use, and have better documentation.
Vultr's documentation is a little less comprehensive and organized than google cloud's; however, its pricing and …
Features
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean DropletsVultr
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Web Services
8.4
Ratings
2% above category average
DigitalOcean Droplets
8.8
Ratings
7% above category average
Vultr
8.6
Ratings
4% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.80 Ratings10.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.30 Ratings5.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.10 Ratings5.00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.40 Ratings9.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Operating system support7.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Security controls8.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Automation8.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean DropletsVultr
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.6 out of 10
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.6 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
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
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean DropletsVultr
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.8
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean DropletsVultr
Likelihood to Recommend
We are using RDS for the database services. With RDS, we don't have to manage much, as most of the DBA tasks are automated. For development purposes, we are using Kubernetes pods, which makes it easy to deploy applications and scale up as needed. AWS integration with in-house applications is seamless, making it easy to keep a data-sensitive application on-premises while still utilizing AWS services.
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There are some other platforms that compete with DigitalOcean Droplets that have more performant servers for a very minimal price decrease. However, DigitalOcean's servers still have great performance, and the experience is better when you consider the developer console, managed options, and uptime that DigitalOcean offers. DigitalOcean is the better all-around package.
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Vultr is amazing for anyone who needs a server and wants to spend time taking care of it, or for someone who wants in on it. WordPress Minecraft kids can use Votr. The scenario is not as appropriate for the people who do not have as much technical knowledge and capacity and don't want to invest in it, not because of Votr itself, but because VPS is not kids' play. Even though we have a Minecraft server and they're quite easy, there will come a time when, if you put your business infrastructure inside Vultr or any VPS, you need to take care of it. Otherwise, it will have a problem.
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Pros
  • Starting an instance and accessing it for testing purpose, demo or production deployment its always easy.
  • All the things which are available over AWS are pretty well managed and easy to use.
  • You might find everything you required for an product and other development over AWS.
  • Its suitable for both either an enterprise or an startup
  • Various resources and documentation are available in case you struck somewhere.
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  • 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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  • The uptime is perfect . If there are any downtimes it is well informed and its in non - production hours to ensure that the systems are not hit
  • Accessibility and the dashboard is amazing where you have full control over the VPS system.
  • The flexibility of OS on which to create your VPS is also amazing .
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Cons
  • The AWS Management Console can be overwhelming. so a better dashboard and organizing it would improve usability.
  • The pricing models are complex. We need a more clear price calculators and cost management tools to manage our expenses better.
  • Enhancements in cross service compatibility and easier third party integrations could streamline workflow.
  • Simplifying model training in SageMaker and improving IAM for granular access control would make AWS more user friendly
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  • 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.
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  • the ability of increasing a specific configuration without the need of upgrading the whole plan, for example i might need to add more memory but i'm satisfied with my current processors and hard disk capacity (or vise versa)
  • Solving the problems of taking an image to the server if the server capacity (hard disk) is bigger than 1TB (which i'm currently facing a big problem because of that)
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Likelihood to Renew
I would gladly rely on AWS for any large-scale application deployment. For prototyping and small-scale applications, a more heavily managed environment on top of the 'bare metal' virtual infrastructure, such as Heroku or Elastic Bean Stalk, is probably a more productive approach in most cases
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No answers on this topic
Just a great product with no bells and whistles, which is the advantage. We spend very little time learning and using Vultr and more time using the systems we have in Vultr to complete our tasks. Not having to worry about the IT overhead is huge and saves a great deal of time
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Usability
Amazon Web Services is a great tool when it comes to middle size organizations like us. It provides multiple tools and functionalities in low costs. The best feature we have to pay as we go. No financial burden on company for the unused instances. It also comes with greater level of security such as two level authorization such as multi factor authorization.
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Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
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easy to use and configure. great bang for the buck. I need an affordable solution to host in the cloud data from systems installed at our client's site with the ability to drill down and change the configuration remotely. Vultr enabled us to do that in an efficient and affordable way.
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Reliability and Availability
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
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No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Performance
AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
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No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
company because of its affordability and ease of use.
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No answers on this topic
Vultr makes it easy to contact technical support. The techs are very competent. In a number of occasions they have bounced the responsibility back to me when they could have saved us all time and heartache by simply implementing the solution directly
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Implementation Rating
The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
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No answers on this topic
Vultr implementation seemed based on open-source tools and basic cloud principles - some things were more complicated to do compared with more developed cloud providers, but on the other hand it was more extensible by open-source tools.
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Alternatives Considered
In my personal experience, AWS is superior to both GCP and Azure in the majority of usable applications. GCP suffers from the near total misunderstanding of how support system is even supposed to work, and while _some_ services are pretty nifty and well-polished, some are mindbogglingly designed black boxes with self-conflicting documentation. Some of it comes from having legacy systems, sure, but AWS somehow manages, even having a rather big lead start. Azure, from my limited experience, is limited to people somehow coerced into its usage by external constraints. That being said, IF you can design and implement something there, it will probably run fine.
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DigitalOcean Droplets has more advanced options and the devs at our team are extremely geeky and they prefer to have full control on the server via SSH rather than cPanel.
Read full review
Vultr has better support and competitive pricing. The network is solid and globally deployed. IP reputation is clean, and security is tight. Ease of use and documentation is really good. User experience has been the best I ever experienced. Low stress, reliable hosting I would recommend to anyone. It helped me easily scale and expand my business.
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Return on Investment
  • Provisioning resources like large database instances is really quick. We can easily scale our instances up or down as per need.
  • Storing files in S3 instead of onprem NAS drives is much more economical, especially for the files stored in glacier deep archive for compliance purposes.
  • Backup snapshots of EBS volumes and RDS instances may increase the cost of cloud if not cleaned up properly.
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  • 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
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  • Moving from Cloudways to Vultr (with GridPane) has saved us over $100 per month.
  • Placing servers near customer's clients is invaluable. Customers notice.
  • Wordpress performance on Vultr servers is great. We've had reduced TTFB from Cloudways in the region of 60-80%.
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ScreenShots

Vultr Screenshots

Screenshot of Vultr's control panel helps users spend less time managing infrastructure.Screenshot of Vultr's services offer additional configuration and inside of the simplified control panel.Screenshot of a display of when peak activity happens on an application. The server health graphs provide insight from the moment the server is created.Screenshot of Vultr's interface, which allows users to deploy high performance servers worldwide from any device.Screenshot of how to reach the 24/7/365 technical support team that is available through Vultr's ticketing system.