TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

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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

    Google Ads

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.

    $500

    in Ads credit in the first 60 days

    Pricing
    DigitalOceanGoogle Ads
    Editions & Modules
    1GB-16GB
    $5.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    8GB-160GB
    $60.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    Offer A
    $500
    in Ads credit in the first 60 days
    Offer B
    $1500
    in Ads credit in the first 60 days
    Offer C
    $3000
    in Ads credit in the first 60 days
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    DigitalOceanGoogle Ads
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    DigitalOceanGoogle Ads
    Considered Both Products
    DigitalOcean
    No answer on this topic
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    81%
    Would buy again
    42 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    76%
    Delivers good value for the price
    37 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    79%
    Happy with the feature set
    41 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    69%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    34 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    70%
    Implementation went as expected
    35 Answers
    Features
    DigitalOceanGoogle Ads
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of DigitalOcean and Google Ads
    Feature
    DigitalOcean
    9.2
    36 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Google Ads
    -
    Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.931 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling9.932 Ratings00 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing9.723 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates10.029 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring tools9.035 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images9.733 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating system support9.033 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security controls8.632 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation6.55 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad Campaigns
    Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of DigitalOcean and Google Ads
    Feature
    DigitalOcean
    -
    Ratings
    Google Ads
    7.2
    11 Ratings
    10% above category average
    Ad campaign creation00 Ratings7.911 Ratings
    Ad deployment00 Ratings7.510 Ratings
    Display advertising00 Ratings7.410 Ratings
    Ad display and retargeting segmentation00 Ratings7.511 Ratings
    Sequence targeting00 Ratings6.910 Ratings
    Contextual advertising00 Ratings7.210 Ratings
    Social advertising00 Ratings6.35 Ratings
    Ad Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of DigitalOcean and Google Ads
    Feature
    DigitalOcean
    -
    Ratings
    Google Ads
    7.3
    11 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Ad dashboards00 Ratings7.511 Ratings
    Ad performance reports00 Ratings7.911 Ratings
    Ad conversion tracking00 Ratings7.311 Ratings
    Ad attribution reporting00 Ratings7.211 Ratings
    Ad forecasting and optimization00 Ratings6.911 Ratings
    Ad Auctions
    Comparison of Ad Auctions features of DigitalOcean and Google Ads
    Feature
    DigitalOcean
    -
    Ratings
    Google Ads
    7.9
    10 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Ad bidding00 Ratings7.910 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    DigitalOceanGoogle Ads
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    WordStream
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    WordStream
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DigitalOceanGoogle Ads
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (36 ratings)
    8.7
    (126 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.6
    (21 ratings)
    Usability
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    7.7
    (17 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.8
    (9 ratings)
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DigitalOceanGoogle Ads
    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
    Read full review
    Google
    Google Ads is a useful advertising tool to build brand exposure and generate lead volumes for your chosen product. Whilst it can be costly at times due to competitor bidding strategies and requires constant monitoring to ensure campaigns perform as expected, it typically provides the desired quality and quantity of leads for custom budgets.
    Incentivized
    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
    Read full review
    Google
    • Automated targeting via Smart Shopping campaign. It's one of the best campaign types in Google Ads. In the beginning, you may see lower revenue and ROAS, but once you give some meaningful time to your campaign, it is most likely to perform well.
    • Smart bidding strategies: Google Ads has developed some really great bidding strategies such as maximizing conversion and maximizing conversion with ROAS settings. Based on one's requirement and their goal with revenue and target ROAS, they can choose the appropriate bidding strategy.
    • Reporting: A business owner and advertising must know about their audiences, how their campaigns have been performing, what's working and what's not, and for that reason, powerful, effective reporting is needed, and Google Ads provides rich details reporting that covers almost every aspect of a business.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Google
    • If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
    • There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.
    Incentivized
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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
    Google
    I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Google
    This is more of a subjective rating, because I think it can be increased with how much our ad spend is. The more of an ad spend, the more visibility we can get, and therefore all features can climb. With an overall larger presence the usability is that where we can get messages out quick, and that's the main thing we try to do with our campaigns.
    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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    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    DigitalOcean
    Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
    Incentivized
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    Google
    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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    Google
    We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    DigitalOcean
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
    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
    Google
    Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
    Incentivized
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    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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    Google
    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
    Read full review
    Google
    • Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
    • Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
    • If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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