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DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean

Overview

What is DigitalOcean?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

DigitalOcean is a versatile platform that has been widely adopted for various use cases by different types of users. For web developers …
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Popular Features

View all 9 features
  • Pre-defined machine images (29)
    8.7
    87%
  • Dynamic scaling (28)
    8.2
    82%
  • Monitoring tools (30)
    7.7
    77%
  • Operating system support (29)
    7.7
    77%
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Pricing

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1GB-16GB

$5.00

Cloud
Starting Price Per Month

8GB-160GB

$60.00

Cloud
Starting Price Per Month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Demo: Deploying Librarian to DigitalOcean's App Platform in 3 minutes

YouTube

Hands on with Redis Labs and DigitalOcean

YouTube

MICROWEBER TUTORIAL + DEMO + INSTALL + REVIEW

YouTube

DigitalOcean Swimmer Demo

YouTube
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Features

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides the basic building blocks for an IT infrastructure like servers, storage, and networking, in an on-demand model over the Internet

8.2
Avg 8.1
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Product Details

What is DigitalOcean?

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.

Deployment

  • Create managed Kubernetes clusters just by specifying the size and location of worker nodes

  • Standard, general purpose, or CPU-optimized compute types

  • App marketplace

  • Global availability

Scalability

  • Scale up, scale down, or migrate between Droplets (virtual machines)

  • Distribute traffic across droplets

  • Redirect network traffic

  • Hourly billing

Storage

  • Managed MySQL, Redis, or PostgreSQL databases

  • Store and retrieve any amount of data (audio, video, etc.)

  • SSD-based storage support

  • Backups and snapshots

Security

  • Cloud firewalls

  • Private networking

  • Two-factor authorization and centralized billing

Monitoring

  • Native integration

  • Resource usage reports and graphs

  • Real-term alerts and notifications

DigitalOcean Video

Premium Droplets by DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Pre-configured templates highest, with a score of 9.3.

The most common users of DigitalOcean are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(127)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

DigitalOcean is a versatile platform that has been widely adopted for various use cases by different types of users. For web developers and engineers, DigitalOcean offers a seamless hosting solution for websites and web applications, allowing them to easily set up and manage their own servers. This includes hosting personal and professional websites, managing documentation for migration and setup, as well as providing support throughout the process. Customers have praised DigitalOcean for its user-friendly interface and the ability to quickly spin up servers for testing new WordPress 'stacks' within minutes.

In addition to web hosting, DigitalOcean is also utilized by organizations for cloud computing needs. This includes hosting cloud instances, managing DNS records, utilizing floating IP addresses, deploying Kubernetes instances, and setting up load balancers. The flexibility and scalability of DigitalOcean's services allow organizations to easily adapt their infrastructure based on their specific requirements. Moreover, development teams appreciate the low-cost reliable servers and support provided by DigitalOcean when it comes to developing, testing, and deploying production infrastructure.

One notable use case is DustMoon, a media company that switched to DigitalOcean for hosting their website. They reported improved performance after moving to an entry-level VPS plan. Another use case involves customers using DigitalOcean to host custom scheduling software publicly, eliminating the need for VPN accounts or exposing servers to public access, thus enhancing security in the process.

DigitalOcean's simplicity, flexibility, and affordability make it an attractive option for both small client projects and larger organizations. Customers highly recommend DigitalOcean as a web hosting service due to its fantastic performance at a great price point. However, while users appreciate the features provided by DigitalOcean, some have suggested that the support could be more effective. Overall, DigitalOcean has proven to be a reliable solution for various cloud computing needs such as hosting websites and web apps, running microservices, and launching prototypes quickly and cost-effectively.

Developer-friendly tools and APIs: Users have expressed their appreciation for the developer-friendly tools and APIs provided by DigitalOcean, finding them useful and conducive to efficient development processes. Several reviewers have stated that these tools have made it easier for them to develop and manage their cloud resources effectively.

Great documentation: The comprehensive and well-structured documentation offered by DigitalOcean has been highly praised by users. Many reviewers have found the documentation to be helpful, particularly when setting up various configurations and services. They have highlighted its wide coverage of topics as a valuable resource for guidance.

Active and helpful community: The active and supportive community of DigitalOcean has garnered positive feedback from users. They have commended the community's responsiveness in providing assistance whenever needed. Reviewers also appreciate the availability of official help articles and public forums, which contribute to their positive experience with the platform.

Limited product offerings: Some users have mentioned that DigitalOcean offers a limited range of products compared to other cloud providers, specifically noting the absence of enterprise-level options such as Windows Server, MS SQL Server, and Oracle products. This may be a drawback for users who require a wider variety of services.

Limited number of regions: Users have expressed concern about the limited availability of data center regions in DigitalOcean. While the platform is expanding rapidly and introducing new data centers, some reviewers feel that having fewer options could be disadvantageous for those who require specific geographical locations.

Complex email server setup: Setting up email servers on DigitalOcean can be complex according to some users, leading them to recommend external services like Zoho instead. The intricate process may pose challenges for users who prefer a simpler email setup within the DigitalOcean platform.

Users have made several recommendations based on their experiences with DigitalOcean. The three most common recommendations are:

  1. Users suggest DigitalOcean as a good choice for enterprise or small-medium businesses, but not for beginner individual developers. They appreciate the ease of setup compared to other cloud providers.

  2. Use DigitalOcean for hosting projects with great support and functionalities. Users find DigitalOcean to be an excellent platform for hosting web applications, virtual machines, and VPS servers. They recommend using DigitalOcean for quick and affordable hosting needs, especially for small projects or users with limited server management experience.

  3. Consider DigitalOcean as a reliable cloud provider for startups or new companies looking to quickly create a backend infrastructure or cloud-based computing. Users mention that DigitalOcean is easy to use, provides transparent monthly billing, and offers straightforward pricing. They also appreciate helpful documentation, interesting promotions, inbuilt monitoring, and consistent service without surprises at the end of the month.

Overall, users find DigitalOcean to be a competitive option in the market with flexible tariffs, easy setup, strong functionality, and affordability.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 31)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DigitalOcean is a powerful tool so as to control the virtual server in the cloud. It's widely used in our organization so that the servers can be allocated in multiple regions as per our needs. It's a highly scalable and flexible tool to host websites and web apps that allows us to use our own servers as well. The performance is great and the server cost is inexpensive. The user can eventually have full control over the machine with its user friendly interface.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DigitalOcean is used to host our apps and website. Before using it, we were using share-hosting and were having issues with website speed and capacity at peak times. Our website often crashed for too many people at the same time on it, so we decided to change to dedicated servers and ended up choosing DigitalOcean.
Marco Carnevali | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using DigitalOcean for storing our statics website and WordPress websites. With DigitalOcean we were able to migrate from AWS and unlock [an] easier, cheaper cloud platform. With DigitalOcean we are able to [set up] a scalable server easily and as [quickly] as possible[.]
Praneeth Karnena | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DustMoon is a media company that publishes hand-picked stories from the tech. I founded the company with some help from my colleagues. DustMoon quickly outgrew shared hosting with over 500K visits per month. We then decided to try out DigitalOcean as it is the most hyped VPS provider at that time. It exceeded our expectations with its performance. We used the entry-level VPS with 512MB RAM. Configuration: Nginx, Redis, MariaDB & Varnish. Adding Varnish to the stack is our best decision. We load tested our server stack with Blitz and it successfully handled 3-4.5 million visits with a very low response times.

And thereafter, we implemented the same stack for our sister network, consisting of 3 sites.
Leonel Quinteros | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Right now it's used to host the entire infrastructure of a SaaS ERP system. It helps running and to scale the systems with developer-friendly tools and easy-to-understand prices.
We use several Virtual Machines to host our different services from our SOA architecture (Nginx load balancer/API proxy, PostgreSQL DB instance, APIs servers, and Nginx Web Servers) together with some networking services like Private Network and Public Floating IPs.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We've used DigitalOcean for running microservices. It's only used by our development team and isn't often used by other departments. It isn't our primary hosting service (we use AWS/Heroku) but I've used it both at work and on personal projects to quickly and cheaply launch prototypes. DigitalOcean is better for people who are a little more technical but it has some nice templated hosting solutions (e.g. WordPress) that less technical members of the team can use.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used DigitalOcean (DO) to support several VMs used in our stack. One VM was used for the Database, another for the Worker, one for the Redis instance, and lastly, we used one for our primary web app. Highly recommend using DO. Super simple to use, it offers plenty of flexibility around snapshots, resizing, and backups too!
Chris Widner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have created our own custom scheduling software that allows us to manage various projects and associated information across the various internal departments at the company. While this started as an internal tool our customers requested access. Instead of dealing with maintaining VPN accounts or opening our server to public/anonymous access we chose DigitalOcean to host a public-facing copy of our software strictly for customer use.
Brandon Mullins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We happily use DigitalOcean for all of our hosting needs. DigitalOcean provides cloud based servers that are used throughout our organization. In the past we have used various other hosting companies, but DigitalOcean offers us not only a hosting service, but the ability to utilize our own servers. We have been extremely happy with the services DigitalOcean has provided, and any technical problems have been addressed quickly and professionally.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used DigitalOcean for some of our one-off virtualization workloads and to see the viability of working with one-off POCs and smaller projects. This was primarily for us to test out other offerings out there to see if it stacked up to products we currently use. We did a POC on a WordPress farm for a year and then kept up a couple of instances for posterity purposes.
Fedor Paretsky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use DigitalOcean for all of our cloud computing needs, including cloud instances, managing DNS records, floating IP address, Kubernetes instances, and load balancers. It is directly utilized mainly with engineers and developers and is used in combination with a selection of other SaaS to complete our development environments and backend. We also self-host some other developer tools and marketing tools on our DigitalOcean servers as well.
Jeanine Schoessler | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use DigitalOcean for managing both personal and professional websites. I left hosting and domain support from Site5 last year and found DigitalOcean to be the best option for managing my domains. It offers loads of documentation for migration and setup as well as friendly support from their helpdesk team. You'll want to be (or have a member of your team who is) proficient with the terminal as all setup and server settings are managed through the command line.
Chris Putnam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use DigitalOcean primarily for a set of applications and automated functionalities. These include client solutions, public applications, and internal development tools. It's primarily used by our programming teams, with some use by other teams in the company.

I also use DigitalOcean for similar personal purposes, including some website hosting as well.
Craig Nash | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DigitalOcean provides basic "cloud computing" and describes themselves as "bare-bones", which is an understatement when compared to other cloud services, as they only provide computing services (virtual machines), which they call "Droplets", with a few basic sub-services that you can add to your droplets, such as storage, networking, and load-balancing. At this point in telling someone about DigitalOcean, I usually get a question along the lines of "so they are a VPS or a Cloud provider"? DigitalOcean is very clearly in the cloud category. The difference is that a VPS host rents each physical server (individually) to multiple clients, who then share the resources. In Cloud architecture, multiple servers, storage devices, and other network resources are connected together and combined into a single "resource" pool, usually consisting of Processors, RAM, Storage (Hard Drive), Network Adapters, and many more depending on how advanced the service is (GPU, Video RAM, USB Bus, etc). This pool is then shared out as individual units to power "internet" accessible virtual devices, such as servers. The Internet is illustrated in a network diagram as a cloud, hence the name. This architecture has many benefits, such as being available "on the fly", letting a client instantly start, stop, or modify a server. This means a client only pays for what he is using, usually in hourly blocks, which is how DigitalOcean bills. Since all the resources are from a group of servers, a failure of one server or hard drive, NIC, etc does not affect a virtual server at all, meaning any cloud server is considered a "high availability" server. Along with servers, DigitalOcean also offers network services, allowing a client to have a complete private virtual network, with switches, routers, servers, load balancers, subnets, and more, all with the same security advantages as physical units. By offering only 'high-demand' services, DigitalOcean offers awesome cloud services at an affordable rate (starting $5/month), which gives every business, hobbyist, student, and etc access to real network resources, via an easy to use web interface, If they can order a computer from Dell, they can get a cloud server.
February 22, 2017

DigitalOcean is awesome

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using DigitalOcean as the primary host for a number of different small client projects. We had previously tried alternative hosts such as AWS however, they were viewed as over complicated for our use case. Droplet hours are cheaper compared to many of their competitors such as Heroku Dynos.
Tyler Longren | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[It's being used] organization-wide. It allows us to have servers in various regions as needed. It offers excellent flexibility in terms of capacity. The ability to spin up a new server with specified storage and memory requirements is amazing and changed how we manage our infrastructure.

The various regions available to DigitalOcean customers is very nice for targeting specific geographical areas. Launching a service for the Asian market? Spin up a server in Indonesia, instead of New York like you'd do for US users.
Hernán Silva | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For a company I worked with as a consultant, I implemented DigitalOcean as a web server for hosting the main website of the company and a self-hosted JIRA instance where they tracked progress on an internal project. DigitalOcean performed really well during times of high traffic and high use of both the website and the project management tool.
Chris Gabriel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I needed a robust, scalable server setup in a datacenter to power my online businesses. Shared hosting didn't cut it anymore and I found DigitalOcean did a better job of letting me control my hardware. Their API allows for advanced automation options should I choose to implement them down the line.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use digitalocean as a way to prototype infrastructure code in a way that is fundamentally different from Amazon Web Services. DigitalOcean's product features are more minimal and thus let us be sure we aren't relying on proprietary or non-standard features of AWS. In the past, I've deployed personal projects to DigitalOcean. And at a previous employer, we used DigitalOcean as our primary deployment target.
Joey Yax | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DigitalOcean is being used for a handful of client websites, internally and for temporary development/sandbox/staging environments. The selection of locations, ease of setup and speed of provisioning a new server (Droplet) for use is huge-- I can typically have a LAMP server with full root access up and running within 15-30 minutes. Reliability and speed are excellent as well. I really have nothing negative to say about Digital Ocean.
Edward Larkey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used DigitalOcean because we could easily segment client websites onto their own servers and scale each one according to traffic. This enabled us to fully adopt automation. Each server was created identically and we could be sure that we got the same result after each build. We also enabled DigitalOcean's backup services on all our servers as an extra layer of backup for our services.
Cameron Banga | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use DigitalOcean to host a variety of different web products, which we build for clients. It's used by essentially our whole team, and solves the problem of allowing easy to access, quick set up VPS availability. Before DigitalOcean, we were primarily using Heroku and other cloud container services. This hosting strategy got expensive, and offered less powerful resources than DigitalOcean.

Once we moved, we were able to drop hosting bills for a couple of clients from ~$500+/month, to ~$20-30/month. We also had the flexibility and power of having a full Linux VPS, which was more customizable and could be fine tuned to customer needs better.
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