DigitalOcean Droplets vs. Google Compute Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 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
Google Compute Engine
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Google Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product from Google Cloud. It provides virtual machines with carbon-neutral infrastructure which run on the same data centers that Google itself uses.
$0
per month GB
Pricing
DigitalOcean DropletsGoogle Compute Engine
Editions & Modules
Basic
$4
per month
CPU-Optimized
$42
per month
General Purpose
$63
per month
Memory-Optimized
$84
per month
Storage-Optimized
$131
per month
Preemptible Price - Predefined Memory
0.000892 / GB
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.001907 / GB
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.002669 / GB
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined Memory
$0.004237 / GB
Hour
Preemptible Price - Predefined vCPUs
0.006655 / vCPU
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.014225 / CPU
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.019915 / vCPU
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.031611 / vCPU
Hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DigitalOcean DropletsGoogle Compute Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
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.Prices vary according to region (i.e US central, east, & west time zones). Google Compute Engine also offers a discounted rate for a 1 & 3 year commitment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DigitalOcean DropletsGoogle Compute Engine
Considered Both Products
DigitalOcean Droplets
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 …
Google Compute Engine
Chose Google Compute Engine
We have tried using DigitalOcean Droplets for some of our minor and non critical VMs. In our experience, Google Compute Engine fares well in comparison the DigitalOcean Droplets as they provide better availability, better support and in general, a better experience.
Chose Google Compute Engine
The Google Cloud computing engine is fair at the top because it bills customers, automatic discounting for extended use, and how fast it can be turned on. We enjoy things around setting it up very easily via APIs and CLI commands, and with the always-on recommendations from …
Chose Google Compute Engine
We decided to use GCE mainly for its price and good looking UI.
Features
DigitalOcean DropletsGoogle Compute Engine
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean Droplets
8.8
1 Ratings
7% above category average
Google Compute Engine
7.6
64 Ratings
8% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.01 Ratings8.125 Ratings
Dynamic scaling10.01 Ratings7.859 Ratings
Elastic load balancing5.01 Ratings8.353 Ratings
Pre-configured templates5.01 Ratings8.261 Ratings
Monitoring tools10.01 Ratings3.026 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images9.01 Ratings8.363 Ratings
Operating system support10.01 Ratings8.264 Ratings
Security controls10.01 Ratings8.362 Ratings
Automation10.01 Ratings7.92 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DigitalOcean DropletsGoogle Compute Engine
Small Businesses
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.9 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 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
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
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DigitalOcean DropletsGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(8 ratings)
8.4
(64 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(3 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.9
(9 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(27 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(27 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOcean DropletsGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Read full review
Google
You can use Google Cloud Compute Engine as an option to configure your Gitlab, GitHub, and Azure DevOps self-hosted runners. This allows full control and management of your runners rather than using the default runners, which you cannot manage. Additionally, they can be used as a workspace, which you can provide to the employees, where they can test their workloads or use them as a local host and then deploy to the actual production-grade instance.
Read full review
Pros
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
Read full review
Google
  • Scaling - whether it's traffic spikes or just steady growth, Google Compute Engine's auto-scaling makes sure we've got the compute power we need without any manual juggling acts
  • Load balancing - Keeping things smooth with that load balancing across multiple VMs, so our users don't have to deal with slow load times or downtime even when things get crazy busy
  • Customizability - Mix and match configs for CPU, RAM, storage and whatnot to suit our specific app needs
Read full review
Cons
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.
Read full review
Google
  • Built-in monitoring via Stackdriver is quite expensive for what it provides.
  • Initially provided quotas (ie. max compute units one can use) are very low and it took several requests to get an appropriate amount.
  • Support on GCE is limited to their knowledge base and forums. For more hands-on support provided by Google, you must pay for their Premium services.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
Its pretty good, easy and good performance. Also, interface is very good for starters compared to competitors. Infra as Code (IaC) using Terraform even added easiness for creation, management and deletion of compute Virtual Machines (VM). Overall, very good and very easy cloud based compute platform which simplified infrastructure, very much recommend.
Read full review
Usability
DigitalOcean
Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
Read full review
Google
Having interacted with several cloud services, GCE stands out to me as more usable than most. The naming and locating of features is a little more intuitive than most I've interacted with, and hinting is also quite helpful. Getting staff up to speed has proven to be overall less painful than others.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
Google Compute Engine works well for cloud project with lesser geographical audience. It sometimes gives error while everything is set up perfectly. We also keep on check any updates available because that's one reason of site getting down. Google Compute Engine is ultimately a top solution to build an app and publish it online within a few minutes
Read full review
Performance
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
It works great all the time except for occasional issues, but overall, I am very happy with the performance. It delivers on the promise it makes and as per the SLAs provided. Networking is great with a premium network, and AZs are also widespread across geographies. Overall, it is a great infra item to have, which you can scale as you want.
Read full review
Support Rating
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
  • The documentation needs to be better for intermediate users - There are first steps that one can easily follow, but after that, the documentation is often spotty or not in a form where one can follow the steps and accomplish the task. Also, the documentation and the product often go out of sync, where the commands from the documentation do not work with the current version of the product.
  • Google support was great and their presence on site was very helpful in dealing with various issues.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
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.
Read full review
Google
Google Compute Engine provides a one stop solution for all the complex features and the UI is better than Amazon's EC2 and Azure Machine Learning for ease of usability. It's always good to have an eco-system of products from Google as it's one of the most used search engine and IoT services provider, which helps with ease of integration and updates in the future.
Read full review
Scalability
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.
Read full review
Return on Investment
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
Read full review
Google
  • With Google Compute we don't have the overhead of managing our own data centers reducing costs and reducing the staff needed to manage systems.
  • As I said earlier, Google's costs are ~1/2 of AWS, so we are able to see a ROI much faster.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Google Compute Engine Screenshots

Screenshot of How to choose the right VM
With thousands of applications, each with different requirements, which VM is right for you?Screenshot of documentation, guides, and reference architectures
Migration Center is Google Cloud's unified migration platform with features like cloud spend estimation, asset discovery, and a variety of tooling for different migration scenarios.