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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

Introducing Premium Droplets on DigitalOcean. Starting at just $6/month, you can choose some of the latest Intel and AMD processors around. Backed by NVMe drives, Premium Droplets are perfect for high-traffic applications that require peak performance at a minimal price. To l...
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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

(132)

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

(1-3 of 3)
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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.
  • Developer-friendly tools and APIs.
  • Great documentation.
  • Awesome community and support.
  • Good and clean UI for cloud resources management.
  • Nice collection of products which is growing all the time adding new products every year.
  • 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.
For single developers/small agencies, quick prototypes or open source-based architectures, Digital Ocean is a great choice. They make it simple to start any project quickly without being afraid of hidden costs.

I wouldn't recommend it to anybody looking for enterprise-level solutions or trying to host proprietary software on the platform.
Big projects that require Global availability and replication may fall short in available regions as well.
Also, projects looking to use modern/advanced technologies, like AI, ML, Big Data, will not find packaged solutions like other cloud providers offer.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (8)
81.25%
8.1
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
90%
9.0
Dynamic scaling
70%
7.0
Elastic load balancing
90%
9.0
Pre-configured templates
80%
8.0
Monitoring tools
70%
7.0
Pre-defined machine images
100%
10.0
Operating system support
70%
7.0
Security controls
80%
8.0
  • Costs are easily predicted, so budget estimation is more accurate.
  • The architecture was defined around available products at the time. With new product offerings, we feel forced to migrate to more robust solutions which adds some cost, but also adds reliability to our infrastructure.
  • Documentation and community docs were a great resource to help us build our architecture.
Digital Ocean is easier to start with and was a great choice for that project. On other projects, I may choose Google Cloud products because of their more complex product offerings and advanced features.
Products like Storage or Pub/Sub isn't available on Digital Ocean and the alternative to Cloud SQL wasn't available at the time we created the project, so product availability may be a deciding factor.
Support can be better, especially for any paying customer.
They help a lot, but mostly through information, it's hard to get support taking actions on your architecture. While this isn't something I look for in a provider, it may be a blocker for some users that may need extra help setting up environments.
Answer times aren't the best either, but not sure how that compares to other providers anyway.
They are really developer-oriented and that can be seen on their APIs design, documentation, community support, and tools.
Their dashboard is clean and easy to use, not overloaded with action buttons or other unnecessary elements.
The Marketplace is a great way to easily deploy a lot of products.
The community docs provide easy to follow step-by-step instructions for deploying almost anything without being an expert.
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.
  • Various geographical regions to run a VPS in.
  • Many pre-built images like WordPress, GitLab, and Ghost.
  • Local networking making it easy to communicate between your VPSs.
  • Backups that are always on and free would be sweet.
  • Better integration with Docker Cloud.
You need to be flexible in your server infrastructure. If you're not sure what you need, DigitalOcean is a great option. If your needs change rapidly, DigitalOcean is a great option. Less appropriate if you need to have physical control over servers, DigitalOcean is not a colocation facility and simply provides virtual servers on their hardware.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (8)
100%
10.0
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
100%
10.0
Dynamic scaling
100%
10.0
Elastic load balancing
100%
10.0
Pre-configured templates
100%
10.0
Monitoring tools
100%
10.0
Pre-defined machine images
100%
10.0
Operating system support
100%
10.0
Security controls
100%
10.0
  • Reduced costs for servers
  • Google Cloud and ChunkHost
DigitalOcean isn't nearly as robust as Google Cloud. DigitalOcean provides VPSs, as does Google Cloud. However, Google Cloud offers many other products as well.

ChunkHost is very similar to DigitalOcean, but doesn't have the infrastructure that DigitalOcean has. Geographical regions aren't available with ChunkHost and they don't provide as many monitoring tools. Comparable service, just not as flexible.
Creede Lambard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use DigitalOcean as a platform for my personal website, to manage email for several domains I administer, and for some personal projects related to my hobbies and interests.
  • Uptime. Since I joined a couple of years ago I don't think I've had a single outage.
  • Native IPv6. IPv6 is the way of the future and DigitalOcean allows me to participate without jumping through hoops (e.g. negotiating through a tunnel broker).
  • Simplicity. I can spin up a droplet and have it up and running quickly, and I don't have to go through a lengthy process to do so.
  • Platform. I love Ubuntu and it's standard with DigitalOcean.
  • External storage. This is the big one. When you spin up a droplet you have a fixed virtual disk size. It would be really nice to be able to temporarily or permanently add storage without resorting to hacks involving solutions like S3 or Dropbox.
  • DNS management. There are numerous DNS solutions available on the net but it would be nice to have one native to DigitalOcean.
I would recommend DigitalOcean to the small-scale operator who just wants to put up a Wordpress site or something similar; to the hobbyist learning about cloud computing; and to someone looking for a platform more powerful than shared hosting, less expensive than a dedicated host and more cost-effective than AWS. For example, until I found DigitalOcean I was making do with a t1.micro AWS instance that was costing about $15 a month when things like bandwidth costs were factored in. My DigitalOcean droplet runs about $20 a month, has much more computing power than the old AWS instance, and is chugging along happily running several Docker containers that house the services I use. However, for those who need a full ecosystem of products like CDNs, in-house DNS, dedicated database solutions and the like, or who are running larger-scale operations, something like AWS would be more appropriate.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (8)
50%
5.0
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
100%
10.0
Dynamic scaling
N/A
N/A
Elastic load balancing
N/A
N/A
Pre-configured templates
N/A
N/A
Monitoring tools
N/A
N/A
Pre-defined machine images
100%
10.0
Operating system support
100%
10.0
Security controls
100%
10.0
  • Since I don't use DigitalOcean for business purposes at the moment, this doesn't apply. But as an IT professional using it for personal projects and as a testbed for learning, it works great.
  • AWS
As I said earlier, for the kinds of things I do I find a $20/mo DigitalOcean droplet to be much more cost-effective than a similar AWS platform. However, for enterprise-level work with things like CDNs and load balancing, I'd be more inclined to evaluate and use AWS.
1
Everything, since it's just me :)
1
In my use case (Ubuntu Linux) you need a good knowledge of Linux in order to install, create and maintain software. Fortunately DigitalOcean makes it easy to do, both with tools related to the OS (e.g. Ubuntu repositories) and tutorials and how-tos I've mentioned elsewhere.
  • Database, both SQL (MySQL) and NoSQL (Redis)
  • Email (Postfix)
  • Website (primarily Rails and Nginx)
  • I run a politically themed URL shortener. DigitalOcean allows me to do this fairly easily with Rails, Redis and MySQL.
  • When Docker burst upon the scene I used my DigitalOcean droplet to learn how it works. Now all of my services run in Docker containers and it makes updating and maintenance easier.
I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
No
Don't really need it. I'm used to doing my own support.
Nobody's perfect. :) But the one or two issues I've run into with DigitalOcean were resolved quickly, and I have to give a shout out to their awesome tutorials. When I've wanted to implement a new feature or find out how something works, I've often been able to find a DigitalOcean tutorial that walks me through it.
Yes
Yes it was. Support was able to pinpoint the issue and help me get it fixed quickly.
Just providing their awesome collection of tutorials and how-tos is exceptional in my book. :)
  • Spinning up a machine
  • Updating via apt
  • Support through tutorials and how-tos
  • Can't think of any!
Yes, but I don't use it
Because everything I've ever wanted to do with DigitalOcean, I've been able to do with no problem.
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