DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox) vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The DigitalOcean App Platform enables developers to build, deploy, and scale apps on what they describe as a simple, fully managed PaaS. Users of the former Nanobox, acquired by DigitalOcean in 2019, have been migrated to the App Platform upon Nanobox's end of life in March 2021.N/A
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 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
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)Microsoft Azure
Editions & Modules
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
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)Microsoft Azure
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe 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
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)Microsoft Azure
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)Microsoft Azure
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)
6.8
2 Ratings
19% below category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes6.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.6
17 Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings9.316 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings7.116 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.116 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.415 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings9.416 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.815 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)Microsoft Azure
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.8 out of 10
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 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
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)Microsoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(2 ratings)
8.5
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(27 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
DigitalOcean App Platform (Nanobox)Microsoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
DigitalOcean
I would only get into it if I where willing to pay for the support plan and getting some assurances from the team as to where they are headed. The platform itself is great and can save you a ton of hard work and money. but it's hard to be confidant in it's sustainability.
Read full review
Microsoft
In terms of cloud computing, Microsoft Azure is the only comprehensive result the company offers. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, it can make use of this system. As a cyber-security professional, this is your best option for data management. A business that wants to minimize capital expenditures can use Microsoft Azure. Many Microsoft services accept it. People with little or no knowledge of cloud computing may find it impossible. It isn’t the solution for companies that don’t want to risk having only one platform and infrastructure vendor.
Read full review
Pros
DigitalOcean
  • Hosting of serverless application
  • Hosting of load balancer
  • Hosting of virtual appliances
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
Read full review
Cons
DigitalOcean
  • The company has not been very communicative as of lately. Not much news, no apparent work on missing features.
  • Some components are incomplete as far as some critical features. For example, I use RethinkDB as my database and it's missing critical features like backup and clustering, so It is unusable and they should have made that clear from the get go.
  • The pricing on the support plan is vague. I do have the feeling it is actually well worth the money, but it's hard to form a decisions based without more predictable specific.
  • Seems to me like the platform's future is unclear.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Usability
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review
Support Rating
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
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
It can help you to host your virtual appliance or serverless application at very low cost. DigitalOcean marketplace also helps you to deploy the serverless app or virtual appliance effortlessly. It is suitable for small scale deployment and the process to setup an account and roll out your app via marketplace is easy and cheap.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
DigitalOcean
  • The platform is saving me a lot of time I would have been wasting on operations instead of development.
  • The platform is saving me a lot of money as I can easily switch between cloud providers to find the best price.
  • I am worried though for the price I might have to pay in case of an unexpected system issue.
  • Hopefully I will be able to pay the support plan before that.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Brings down Capex to customers.
  • Some of the built-in security features of DDoS Basic protection that comes with VNET on Azure or even WAF on AGW brings huge advantages to customers.
  • Hybrid benefits for those who have software assurance can save even more costs by moving to Azure.
Read full review
ScreenShots