DigitalOcean vs. Google Domains

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Google Domains
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$12
per year
Pricing
DigitalOceanGoogle Domains
Editions & Modules
1GB-16GB
$5.00
Starting Price Per Month
8GB-160GB
$60.00
Starting Price Per Month
.com
$12.00
per year
.net
$12.00
per year
.org
$12.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DigitalOceanGoogle Domains
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 Domains
Considered Both Products
DigitalOcean
Chose DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean and ServerPilot work extremely well together. As for other hosting solutions I feel like I have moved on to the best choice available with DigitalOcean. Times change, and DigitalOcean just feels like the next step in the evolution of hosting providers and I for one …
Google Domains

No answer on this topic

Features
DigitalOceanGoogle Domains
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean
9.1
36 Ratings
10% above category average
Google Domains
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.931 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.832 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.323 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates10.029 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools9.235 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images9.433 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.933 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.732 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation6.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DigitalOceanGoogle Domains
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Shopify
Shopify
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Shopify
Shopify
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DigitalOceanGoogle Domains
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(36 ratings)
7.5
(24 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(10 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(9 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOceanGoogle Domains
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.
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Google
[Google Domains is] very simplistic and easy to use, so it's very straightforward to register a new domain but it doesn't have some features that other services provide. Also, the integration with other Google Services and domain search tool is amazing.
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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
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Google
  • Process of buying a domain with Google Domains is easy
  • Payment was simple - can use Google Wallet and other forms of payment.
  • After purchase, you can quickly build a website with one of their partners.
  • Email forwarding add-on for free.
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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.
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Google
  • Google Domains is pretty good at pre-solving email faux pas such as reply all mishaps. Perhaps a built-in email monitoring tool such as knowing when a customer opens up an email would be good. You can get these features with integrations, but what if it was an internal Google product? Might be nice
  • Email masking was a bit difficult to figure out, but nothing you can't discover with a few Google sessions.
  • I wish I could see more insight into time zones that my customers are in, or scheduling calls on Gcal with timezone awareness. I know this is super hard to code around though.
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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!
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Google
Unless the product goes away, I'll continue using it.
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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.
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Google
Because it is intuitively easy to use, like all of their products. The integration with other apps works seamlessly, and you can have a professional website within hours, rather than days, as with most hosting companies. The templates on the website builder for just about every business make it so simple that even I can do it!
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Reliability and Availability
DigitalOcean
Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
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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.
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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.
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Google
I've never actually had to use support because everything has been very straightforward and I have not had a glitch. I have used Google's support for other items so I can only imagine that it's probably the same support which is decent. They do take a while to get back to you.
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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.
Read full review
Google
GoDaddy is great, but what I really like about Google Domains when compared to GoDaddy is the ease of centralization. Our email, calendar, accounts, domain, etc was all handled in one place and that made things really easy. You could also access domains easily and quickly by being logged into your email, instead of worrying about yet another log in.
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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.
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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...
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Google
  • Being able to host my URL with Google Domains is one less thing I have to worry about in my writing career.
  • I'm sure having my URL, which is my name, with Google Domains also helps people find me via Google's search engine.
  • Its ease of integration with other Google products, especially Google Apps for Business, is a huge plus for marketing and day-to-day work.
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ScreenShots