AWS Lambda vs. DigitalOcean App Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS Lambda
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing platform that lets users run code without provisioning or managing servers. With Lambda, users can run code for virtually any type of app or backend service—all with zero administration. It takes of requirements to run and scale code with high availability.
$NaN
Per 1 ms
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
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean App Platform
Editions & Modules
128 MB
$0.0000000021
Per 1 ms
1024 MB
$0.0000000167
Per 1 ms
10240 MB
$0.0000001667
Per 1 ms
Basic
$5
per month
Professional
$12
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean 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
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean App Platform
Features
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean App Platform
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
8.9
7 Ratings
1% above category average
DigitalOcean App Platform
-
Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.23 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
5.2
6 Ratings
13% below category average
DigitalOcean App Platform
-
Ratings
Dashboards5.76 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports5.35 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports4.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
8.6
7 Ratings
5% above category average
DigitalOcean App Platform
-
Ratings
Programming Language Diversity9.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Runtime API Authoring8.17 Ratings00 Ratings
Function/Database Integration8.87 Ratings00 Ratings
DevOps Stack Integration8.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
-
Ratings
DigitalOcean App Platform
6.8
2 Ratings
14% 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
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean App Platform
Small Businesses
IBM Cloud Functions
IBM Cloud Functions
Score 7.4 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean App Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(52 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(17 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(20 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean App Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Lambda excels at event-driven, short-lived tasks, such as processing files or building simple APIs. However, it's less ideal for long-running, computationally intensive, or applications that rely on carrying the state between jobs. Cold starts and constant load can easily balloon the costs.
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.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • No provisioning required - we don't have to pay anything upfront
  • Serverless deployment - it gets executed only when request comes and we pay only for the time the request is getting executed
  • Integrates well with AWS CloudWatch triggers so it is easy to setup scheduled tasks like cron jobs
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DigitalOcean
  • Hosting of serverless application
  • Hosting of load balancer
  • Hosting of virtual appliances
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Developing test cases for Lambda functions can be difficult. For functions that require some sort of input it can be tough to develop the proper payload and event for a test.
  • For the uninitiated, deploying functions with Infrastructure as Code tools can be a challenging undertaking.
  • Logging the output of a function feels disjointed from running the function in the console. A tighter integration with operational logging would be appreciated, perhaps being able to view function logs from the Lambda console instead of having to navigate over to CloudWatch.
  • Sometimes its difficult to determine the correct permissions needed for Lambda execution from other AWS services.
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.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
I give it a seven is usability because it's AWS. Their UI's are always clunkier than the competition and their documentation is rather cumbersome. There's SO MUCH to dig through and it's a gamble if you actually end up finding the corresponding info if it will actually help. Like I said before, going to google with a specific problem is likely a better route because AWS is quite ubiquitous and chances are you're not the first to encounter the problem. That being said, using SAM (Serverless application model) and it's SAM Local environment makes running local instances of your Lambdas in dev environments painless and quite fun. Using Nodejs + Lambda + SAM Local + VS Code debugger = AWESOME.
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DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
Amazon consistently provides comprehensive and easy-to-parse documentation of all AWS features and services. Most development team members find what they need with a quick internet search of the AWS documentation available online. If you need advanced support, though, you might need to engage an AWS engineer, and that could be an unexpected (or unwelcome) expense.
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DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
AWS Lambda is good for short running functions, and ideally in response to events within AWS. Google App Engine is a more robust environment which can have complex code running for long periods of time, and across more than one instance of hardware. Google App Engine allows for both front-end and back-end infrastructure, while AWS Lambda is only for small back-end functions
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
  • Positive - Only paying for when code is run, unlike virtual machines where you pay always regardless of processing power usage.
  • Positive - Scalability and accommodating larger amounts of demand is much cheaper. Instead of scaling up virtual machines and increasing the prices you pay for that, you are just increasing the number of times your lambda function is run.
  • Negative - Debugging/troubleshooting, and developing for lambda functions take a bit more time to get used to, and migrating code from virtual machines and normal processes to Lambda functions can take a bit of time.
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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.
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ScreenShots