DigitalOcean vs. Google Compute Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
DigitalOcean
Score 8.3 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 Compute Engine
Score 8.1 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
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
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices 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[,] …
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 …
Google Compute Engine
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 …
Chose Google Compute Engine
We decided to use GCE mainly for its price and good looking UI.
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. …
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 …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean
8.2
31 Ratings
1% above category average
Google Compute Engine
6.7
38 Ratings
19% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.026 Ratings8.126 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.228 Ratings8.435 Ratings
Elastic load balancing7.220 Ratings8.031 Ratings
Pre-configured templates9.325 Ratings5.036 Ratings
Monitoring tools7.730 Ratings3.027 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.729 Ratings5.737 Ratings
Operating system support7.729 Ratings7.238 Ratings
Security controls7.728 Ratings6.838 Ratings
Automation8.02 Ratings7.92 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
Small Businesses
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(31 ratings)
7.6
(38 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(6 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(9 ratings)
8.4
(10 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOceanGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is a powerful tool with respect to the services and pricing that it offers. It is easier than other products and also provides servers that are inexpensive with great performance. DigitalOcean also offers additional add-ons such as additional IP addresses, scheduling of backups, etc. One of the best advantages is that it is efficient and is open source. Although, it is suited for a firm that is looking to cut down cost. Also, it is not suited for an organization where the dev/platform/DBA team is less experienced.
Read full review
Google
I would still recommend Google Compute Engine for application build and testing but not for building SaaS. As it'd be more tricky to integrate any third party apps, as Google already provides most of the services but sometime our clients request for such customisations, which is more suited per their internal alignments. Machine Learning is a tool which is more efficient than any other provider and has wide range of languages for processing.
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
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
  • 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.
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
I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
Read full review
Google
Overall services are good to go. Received good feedback from users. Have regional server locations. It has free extra service included.
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.
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
Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
Read full review
Google
No answers on this topic
Performance
DigitalOcean
Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
Read full review
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.
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.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
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 migrate their backend and other services to AWS as they scale up.
Read full review
Google
I've used the AWS stack, the Azure stack, OCI, and IBM cloud. I have found GCP and AWS the easiest to deploy, configure, manage, and so on. Google has offered me at least 5 free in person classes to train me in new features on the platform. Likewise AWS has offered me probably 10 to 15 guided online tutorials, with a person to field any questions. All of this free training will no doubt affect my experience in a serious way, so keep that in mind as a reader. Outside of ease of use and configuration, I haven't experienced performance problems across any of the cloud services that I have used.
Read full review
Scalability
DigitalOcean
Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
Read full review
Google
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
DigitalOcean
  • With DigitalOcean, I've been able to move all my sites to https using my own implementations of SSL with LetsEncrypt.
  • Since moving my sites to DigitalOcean, my hosting plan costs less than 40% of what I paid for similar hosting from Site5.
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