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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) vs. DigitalOcean Droplets

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AAmazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch instances with a variety of OSs, load them with custom application environments, manage network access permissions, and run images on multiple systems.

    $0.01

    per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis

    DigitalOcean Droplets

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ADigitalOcean's Droplets is designed to help the user spin up a virtual machine in just 55 seconds. Standard, General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, or Memory-Optimized configurations provide flexibility to build, test, and grow an app from startup to scale.

    $4

    per month

    Pricing
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)DigitalOcean Droplets
    Editions & Modules
    Data Transfer
    $0.00 - $0.09
    per GB
    On-Demand
    $0.0042 - $6.528
    per Hour
    EBS-Optimized Instances
    $0.005
    per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
    Carrier IP Addresses
    $0.005 - $0.10
    T4g Instances
    $0.04
    per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES
    T2, T3 Instances
    $0.05 ($0.096)
    per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES (Windows)
    Basic
    $4
    per month
    CPU-Optimized
    $42
    per month
    General Purpose
    $63
    per month
    Memory-Optimized
    $84
    per month
    Storage-Optimized
    $131
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)DigitalOcean Droplets
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Pricing for DigitalOcean Droplets varies depending on the size of the virtual environment and the associated data needs.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)DigitalOcean Droplets
    Considered Both Products
    Amazon AWS
    Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
    Using Digital Ocean's droplets was much easier and faster to set up and test, but we needed very specific and custom configurations and hardware for our use case, so we went ahead with using Amazon's EC2 instances.
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
    I did not select AWS EC2 as my final choice of infrastructure. I picked Linode. Linode, Digital Ocean, AWS EC2 all provide the VPS infrastructure we need. But because I'm a small company, the cost is very important. I also didn't need the other AWS features. I also want to make …
    Incentivized
    DigitalOcean
    Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
    Vultr had better performance in some instances but overall the dashboard was a mess to use a lot of times. When you zoom out from server performance and price, DigitalOcean offered more useful features, and the API was more consistent in some of the use cases we needed.
    Incentivized
    Chose DigitalOcean Droplets
    Cost is much lesser
    Interface is very easy to use
    Documentation is readily available for most of the usecases.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    24 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    25 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    26 Answers
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    25 Answers
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Features
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)DigitalOcean Droplets
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and DigitalOcean Droplets
    Feature
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
    9.5
    21 Ratings
    17% above category average
    DigitalOcean Droplets
    -
    Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.020 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling9.620 Ratings00 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing9.820 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates9.120 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring tools9.120 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images9.320 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating system support9.620 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security controls9.820 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)DigitalOcean Droplets
    Small Businesses
    DigitalOcean Droplets
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9.5 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)DigitalOcean Droplets
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (67 ratings)
    9.9
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    9.7
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.5
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)DigitalOcean Droplets
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    Suitable for companies that are looking for performance at a competitive price, flexibility to switch instance type even with RI, flexibility to add-on IOPS, option to lower running cost with the regular introduction of new instance type that comes with higher performance but at a lower cost.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean Droplets are the best choice for developers teams that need reliable Linux servers to deploy their projects, the ability to create a droplet for testing purposes then destroy it, and only get charged for the few hours used makes the chances of messing up very slim. DigitalOcean Droplets is a great solution because the servers are scalable and the process of adding more resources like CPU or RAM to an existing droplet takes only a few minutes and once a server is scaled up it can also be scaled down if necessary which is perfect for supporting a temporary peak in traffic for example.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • Huge Diverse range of machine shapes are available which cater to our demand.
    • Ability to combine the machines and integrate them with any other service in AWS (Ex: RDS, S3)
    • Handling performance and scalability using auto-scaling, ELB configuration and high performance machine shapes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    • Simplicity to scale services--the interface is very quick and effective to use
    • Reliability--this is key for us, as any downtime effects our reputation
    • Keeps the costs down--hosting our own equivalent infrastructure would cost a lot more
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • The choices on AMIs, instance types and additional configuration can be overwhelming for any non-DevOps person.
    • The pricing information should be more clear (than only providing the hourly cost) when launching the instance. AWS DynamoDB gives an estimated monthly cost when creating tables, and I would love to see similar cost estimation showing on EC2 instances individually, as not all developers gets access to the actual bills.
    • The term for reserving instances are at least 12 months. With instance types changing so fast and better instances coming out every other day, it's really hard to commit to an existing instance type for 1 or more years at a time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    • In terms of an availability zone, they have limitations not available in most of the geographical locations.
    • No live support is available which can cause problem if you have outage.
    • Number of service is quite limited.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    You an start using EC2 instances immediately, is so easy and intuitive to start using them, EC2 has wizard to create the EC2 instances in the web browser or if you are code savvy you can create them with simple line in the CLI or using an SDK. Once you are comfortable using EC2, you can even automate the process.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    AWS's support is good overall. Not outstanding, but better than average. We have had very little reason to engage with AWS support but in our limited experience, the staff has been knowledgeable, timely and helpful. The only negative is actually initiating a service request can be a bit of a pain.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon EC2 is super flexible compared to the PaaS offerings like Heroku Platform and Google App Engine since with Amazon EC2, we have access to the terminal. In terms of pricing, it's basically just the same as Google Compute Engine. The deciding factor is Amazon EC2's native integration with other AWS services since they're all in the same cloud platform.
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    DigitalOcean Droplets is continuously evolving to be more and more powerful. It has great features and has low cost options, which is really great for developers. Its CDN, Loadbalancer, etc. make it a good place to host a high-traffic application. Moroever, DigitalOcean Droplets has a nonprofit program that helps nonprofit sites to run their infrastructure, which is tremendous and no competitor of DigitalOcean Droplets does that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • It reduced the need for heavy on-premises instances. Also, it completely eliminates maintenance of the machine. Their SLA criteria are also matching business needs. Overall IAAS is the best option when information is not so crucial to post on the cloud.
    • It makes both horizontal and vertical scaling really easy. This keeps your infrastructure up and running even while you are increasing the capacity or facing more traffic. This leads to having better customer satisfaction.
    • If you do not choose your instance type suitable for your business, it may incur lots of extra costs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    DigitalOcean
    • Digital Ocean has been great helping us move web apps to the cloud
    • Digital Ocean has been really helpful when hiring contractors
    • The interface could use some work, but overall its not terrible
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots