Azure App Service vs. DigitalOcean

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure App Service
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
The Microsoft Azure App Service is a PaaS that enables users to build, deploy, and scale web apps and APIs, a fully managed service with built-in infrastructure maintenance, security patching, and scaling. Includes Azure Web Apps, Azure Mobile Apps, Azure API Apps, allowing developers to use popular frameworks including .NET, .NET Core, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby.
$9.49
per month
DigitalOcean
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
DigitalOcean is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform from the company of the same name headquartered in New York. It is known for its support of managed Kubernetes clusters and “droplets” feature.
$5
Starting Price Per Month
Pricing
Azure App ServiceDigitalOcean
Editions & Modules
Shared Environment for dev/test
$9.49
per month
Basic Dedicated environment for dev/test
$54.75
per month
Standard Run production workloads
$73
per month
Premium Enhanced performance and scale
$146
per month
1GB-16GB
$5.00
Starting Price Per Month
8GB-160GB
$60.00
Starting Price Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure App ServiceDigitalOcean
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFree and Shared (preview) plans are ideal for testing applications in a managed Azure environment. Basic, Standard and Premium plans are for production workloads and run on dedicated Virtual Machine instances. Each instance can support multiple applications and domains.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure App ServiceDigitalOcean
Considered Both Products
Azure App Service
Chose Azure App Service
Azure has many data center, their services are more reliable. Azure has way more features than both Linode and DigitalOcean. If someone wants a complete reliable service, he/she must go to Azure instead of Linode and DigitalOcean because even though azure charges more, it is …
DigitalOcean

No answer on this topic

Features
Azure App ServiceDigitalOcean
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
6.4
7 Ratings
19% below category average
DigitalOcean
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.47 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability7.17 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead7.27 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability6.45 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control7.66 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration6.26 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation6.47 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication6.16 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification6.47 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery4.56 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes4.96 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
-
Ratings
DigitalOcean
9.1
36 Ratings
10% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings9.931 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings9.832 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings9.423 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings10.029 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings9.235 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.433 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.933 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.732 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings6.55 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure App ServiceDigitalOcean
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 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
Azure App ServiceDigitalOcean
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(9 ratings)
8.8
(36 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(10 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.8
(9 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure App ServiceDigitalOcean
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
You may easily deploy your apps to Azure App Service if they were written in Visual Studio IDE (typically.NET applications). With a few clicks of the mouse, you may already deploy your application to a remote server using the Visual Studio IDE. As a result of the portal's bulk and complexity, I propose Heroku for less-experienced developers.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is perfect for hosting client websites, running marketing tools, and managing media storage with Spaces and CDN. The use of Droplets to quickly launch landing pages or WordPress sites for campaigns is a Godsend. It’s great for fast, cheap, and scalable solutions. But for complex microservices or projects needing strict compliance (like HIPAA), DigitalOcean may not always be the best fit, but that depends heavily on your project.
Read full review
Pros
Microsoft
  • Extremely easy to deploy and update from Visual Studio
  • It integrates seamlessly with other Azure PaaS resources
  • It has an in-depth integration with AppInsights, so you can understand errors and their root cause easily.
  • Easy to create and delete, what is not the same case in a IaaS resource
  • It escalates based on CPU workload and some other resource variables.
  • Configuration changes are almost immediate
  • Offers an excellent abstraction from hardware backend of the platform
  • That's updated very often, saving time and the risk of a self-performed update over a IaaS
  • That's really easy to develop for Web Apps
  • It supports Function Apps and Web Apps into the same "cost black box"
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • DigitalOcean provides some of the best cost-to-value services available
  • The DigitalOcean cloud console is very intuitive and easy to navigate
  • DigitalOcean has great support for Docker and other dev ops tools like Terraform.
  • DigitalOcean iterates quickly and provides cutting edge features for organizations that want to keep up with the latest and greatest dev ops tooling
  • DigitalOcean has a great developer community and numerous support docs/tutorials
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • Jumps between resource sizes can get expensive
  • You may wind up putting a lot of eggs in one basket--not necessarily a con but something to keep in mind (most of your data will likely be managed and processed through Microsoft products/services if you fully commit to Azure App Service).
  • Learning new technology. If you're moving from on-premises to Azure App Service (or any cloud solutions), you'll likely have to rethink how things are done to achieve the same end results (and/or resources may become expensive quickly).
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • Some products/services available on other Cloud providers aren't available, but they seem to be catching up as they add new products like Managed SQL DBs.
  • While they have FreeBSD droplets (VMs), support for *BSD OSs is limited. I.e. the new monitoring agent only works on Linux.
  • There are no regions available on South America.
  • They don't seem to offer enterprise-level products, even basic ones as Windows Server, MS SQL Server, Oracle products, etc.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
DigitalOcean
I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
Read full review
Usability
Microsoft
I have given this rating because Azure App Service performs very well in terms of speed, reliability, and reducing overhead, and improves overall team productivity, with a little scope for improvement in complex testing scenarios and configurations, scalability concerns in a large setup, and similar tracking and audit needs.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
I honestly can't think of an easier way to set up and maintain your own server. Being able to set up a server in minutes and have fully control is awesome. The UX is incredibly intuitive for first-time users as well so there's no reason to be intimidated when it comes to giving DigitalOcean a shot.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
DigitalOcean
Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
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Performance
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
DigitalOcean
Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
Read full review
Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft has always been known for providing a high standard in terms of customer support and Azure App Service (and as a matter of fact the whole Azure Platform) is no exception. Azure App Service never caused us any issues and we only contacted their customer support for questions regarding server locations and pricing. I feel pretty satisfied with how they treat their customers.
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DigitalOcean
They have always been fast, and the process has been straight-forward. I haven't had to use it enough to be frustrated with it, to be honest, and when I have an issue they fix it. As with all support, I wish it felt more human, but they are doing aces.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
When we chose it, we did so because of its integration with Microsoft applications; now we need to integrate with AI, and Azure doesn't offer a good integration. That is the main reason to change it. It is still great to develop Windows- and Microsoft-based applications, but if we need to integrate with AI, Google wins by far.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is an inexpensive product as compared to other products available in the market. The UI is easy and the beginner can also understand the UI with the step by step guide. It provides a lot of custom features and the user needs to pay only for what they are using. Amazon has a complex UI and is on the expensive side. DigitalOcean is simple to use and is easily manageable and the servers can easily be set up without additional cost and such.
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
DigitalOcean
Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Deployment of ASP.NET apps at the organization has been sped up.
  • An option to offer access to the version control system on a third platform so that we could easily deploy our apps.
  • Because of Azure App Service's scalability capabilities, the costs of running the services are kept to a minimum. As a result, we may save hundreds of dollars each month compared to the expenses of traditional servers by using fewer resources during slack periods.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • Positive - Elastic computer instances make it possible to pay for only for what you need.
  • Positive - Competitive pricing - some of the products that DigitalOcean offers are much cheaper than those offered by competitors.
  • Negative - Having to go to other cloud computing platforms for more specific, advanced services like Computer Vision optimized services, GPU cloud compute instances, etc...
Read full review
ScreenShots