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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    DigitalOcean

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ADigitalOcean 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

    FortiGate

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AFortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A

    Microsoft Azure

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

    $29

    per month

    Pricing
    DigitalOceanFortiGateMicrosoft Azure
    Editions & Modules
    1GB-16GB
    $5.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    8GB-160GB
    $60.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    No answers on this topic
    Developer
    $29
    per month
    Standard
    $100
    per month
    Professional Direct
    $1000
    per month
    Basic
    Free
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    DigitalOceanFortiGateMicrosoft Azure
    Free Trial
    NoYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsFortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    DigitalOceanFortiGateMicrosoft Azure
    Considered Multiple Products
    DigitalOcean
    Chose DigitalOcean
    I've tried both AWS and Azure and, while they're both great solutions, they are much more challenging to setup and maintain. The idea that my billing could spike because of something unexpected leaves me a tad uneasy. For our solutions I'd rather pay the $10/mo with …
    Incentivized
    Chose DigitalOcean
    Initially we started using DigitalOcean due to their pricing point as we were in development phase. Slowly when we used it, we starting liking it a lot as it is very fast & easy to get started, compared to the other Cloud Providers we've used. Also they have blogs and …
    Incentivized
    Chose DigitalOcean
    Vultr is a new player in the game. They don't advertise their hardware model and for that reason, people may not trust them. I have run few benchmarks on Vultr, they performed slightly better than DigitalOcean but they aren't trustworthy. Their transparency index is very low …
    Incentivized
    Chose DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean offers low prices, much lower than AWS (Azure) however AWS provides much more features and better performance than DigitalOcean. I chose DigitalOcean to save myself some money.
    Incentivized
    Fortinet
    Chose FortiGate
    Same functionality (in some cases even greater) at a fraction of the cost, with a much more intuitive management interface and a constantly evolving OS that adapts to the needs of the clients.
    Incentivized
    Chose FortiGate
    Fortigate is a lot easier to configure and manage than a Cisco ASA Firewall. Fortinet feels a lot more intuitive and easier to configure than Cisco. Fortinet is a lot more innovative and have easier to use products.
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    I would say that Azure stacks up pretty good and sometimes better in comparison to what Google Cloud Platform has to offer. I don't like GCP for its absurd licensing fees and it's expensive for just Using EC2 Instances. However, DigitalOcean and AWS can offer far better …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    DigitalOcean's drops are easier to use, reuse and manage.
    Pantheon's interface is easier to use.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    We have settled with Microsoft Azure considered its effective administration and the ability to data visualization and analysis, together with the top-notch security/stability.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    49 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    49 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    44 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    47 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    34 Answers
    Features
    DigitalOceanFortiGateMicrosoft Azure
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of DigitalOcean and Fortinet FortiGate and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    DigitalOcean
    9.2
    36 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Fortinet FortiGate
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    8.4
    27 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.931 Ratings00 Ratings8.126 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling9.932 Ratings00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing9.723 Ratings00 Ratings8.624 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates10.029 Ratings00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
    Monitoring tools9.035 Ratings00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images9.733 Ratings00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
    Operating system support9.033 Ratings00 Ratings8.926 Ratings
    Security controls8.632 Ratings00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
    Automation6.55 Ratings00 Ratings8.224 Ratings
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of DigitalOcean and Fortinet FortiGate and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    DigitalOcean
    -
    Ratings
    Fortinet FortiGate
    8.7
    53 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.951 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.351 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings8.852 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.953 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings8.750 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings7.752 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.353 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings9.152 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings9.348 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings9.251 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings8.539 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    DigitalOceanFortiGateMicrosoft Azure
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.4 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DigitalOceanFortiGateMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (36 ratings)
    8.7
    (79 ratings)
    8.7
    (96 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.0
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    8.7
    (21 ratings)
    8.3
    (36 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.8
    (9 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DigitalOceanFortiGateMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    Fortinet FortiGate addressed an immediate security issue we had a few years ago. The device gave us a much clearer picture of the activities on our network and also more importantly, increased our awareness of threats from the internet as a whole. Fortinet FortiGate helps us to mitigate these threats with regular signature updates from Fortiguard labs, identifying certain characteristics which, once recognised by Fortinet FortiGate, can be harnessed to deploy powerful 'playbooks'.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    • SD-WAN - Load balancing of Internet traffic is a USP of Fortigate and makes it stand tall in the competition. Be it 3 or more Internet Links, multiple Subnets/segments of users to distribute and bandwidth load balancing for links and users. SLA based monitoring of Internet Links / MPLS links, makes it even better to choose the links on the basis of performance (Latency, packet loss, Jitter etc).
    • SSL VPN configuration - As we all have WFH force (to some extend or all employee) during Covid-19, it is impossible to plan BCP without having a SSL VPN. In Fortigate, the SSL VPN configuration is very easy with the help of wizard. The deep CLI-level debugging is also very helpful in troubleshooting. Type of tunnel can be easily configured - Full Tunnel or Split Tunnel for SSL.
    • Explicit Proxy - This is also a great feature to shape and re-route the traffic, configuring the Proxy on the Firewall itself. We are using this feature in Pilot for now, and planned to rollout in few weeks looking at the success rate of the POC.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
    • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
    • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
    • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Fortinet
    • Documentation is missing a great deal of detail and assumes the customer and just guess and fill in the blanks themselves
    • Fortinet has lots and lots of video guides on topics that only a small percentage of customers would ever need
    • The documentation and video guides do not get updated so most is only relevant to older software versions
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
    • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
    • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
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    Likelihood to Renew
    DigitalOcean
    I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Fortinet
    Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
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    Usability
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    The firewall runs very well, firmware updates are fairly quick but you must follow the upgrade path. Neglecting this step will cause a lot of pain. If you decide to go with Fortinet FortiGate switches and/or access points, they can be managed within the firewall which is great. We're also using the FortiAnalyzer which easily plugs into the firewall for any reporting you may require.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    DigitalOcean
    Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    DigitalOcean
    Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    The Support team at Fortinet is excellent. They can not only help you configure the device for what you are trying to do, they offer suggestions on improving rules, and troubleshooting issues. Their response time is fast, ensuring you are up and running immediately with no questions asked. We had a hard drive failure in one of our Fortinet Fortigate appliances. The tech answered immediately, and started rebuilding the drive after some preliminary investigations. After rebuilding, there were still errors and issues, so they dispatched a brand new Fortinet Fortigate appliance. The tech then backed up the configurations for when the new device came in, which showed up in a few hours. A restore of the configuration took less than a minute, and there were no more errors or issues.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    DigitalOcean
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    DigitalOcean
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Fortinet
    [Fortinet] FortiGate is not only cost effective but it gives the comprehensive security against the APT attacks and gives the complete traffic visibility and granular control. You can easily create the VDOMs (Virtual firewall) within a Fortigate firewall and customize the dashboard as per your requirement if you have multiple VDOMs within a single firewall.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    DigitalOcean
    No answers on this topic
    Fortinet
    No changes needed to terms and conditions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    DigitalOcean
    Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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...
    Incentivized
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    Fortinet
    • The pricing given to us for our firewall was well within what we were already spending for other vendors solutions and had the added value of eliminating a separate expense for a dedicated web filtering appliance.
    • We have also adopted Fortinet's security fabric approach and thus changed vendors for our switch and AP devices. These devices have come at reduced prices as compared to another previous vendor we were using, particularly in relation to ongoing annual maintenance costs.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
    • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
    • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots