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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 Compute Engine

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AGoogle 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
    DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
    Editions & Modules
    1GB-16GB
    $5.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    8GB-160GB
    $60.00
    Starting Price 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
    DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—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
    DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
    Considered Both Products
    DigitalOcean
    Chose DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean is an easier and cheaper way to [set up] new machines. The UX is really good and it's easy to find what you need. Competition offer[s] a complicated way to manage machines and the cost is sometimes more than [...] double of what DigitalOcean offer[s]. However[,] …
    Incentivized
    Chose DigitalOcean
    Amazon has a very complex UI and many products to offer. They haven't polished up their UI and it has a much greater learning curve compared to DigitalOcean. However, Amazon Web Services (AWS) does have more comprehensive cloud computing services, which forces some companies to …
    Incentivized
    Google
    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.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    GCE was an easy choice for us after evaluating our options. We needed something that was dynamic enough to handle our specialized stack, but easy enough that our engineers weren't spending too much time configuring and launching. We found AWS's offering to be similar but …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Comparabale to AWS EC2. We selected GCE because of the out-of-the-box K8 engine setup. On AWS, I find it a bit tedious.
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    We decided to use GCE mainly for its price and good looking UI.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Pricing scale is good. Google Cloud Compute provides additional facilities free of cost (limited storage). Received one year free credits to get started. Nearest regions are available. Others amenities including free repository service available. UI is modern and fast to load. …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    We ultimately chose Google Compute for the price difference as compared to other providers. Google's pricing for Windows servers is even lower than Microsoft's own cloud service, Azure. The terminology used across Google Compute is much easier to understand than the …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    45 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    44 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    44 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    Features
    DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of DigitalOcean and Google Compute Engine
    Feature
    DigitalOcean
    9.2
    36 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Google Compute Engine
    8.0
    65 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.931 Ratings8.125 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling9.932 Ratings7.860 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing9.723 Ratings9.353 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates10.029 Ratings9.562 Ratings
    Monitoring tools9.035 Ratings3.026 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images9.733 Ratings9.464 Ratings
    Operating system support9.033 Ratings8.365 Ratings
    Security controls8.632 Ratings9.163 Ratings
    Automation6.55 Ratings7.92 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (36 ratings)
    8.9
    (65 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    6.9
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    8.0
    (9 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.6
    (28 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (28 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.8
    (9 ratings)
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
    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
    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.
    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
    • 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
    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
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    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.
    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
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    DigitalOcean
    Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    DigitalOcean
    Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    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
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    DigitalOcean
    Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    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.