Amazon Web Services vs. DigitalOcean

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Web Services
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.
$0
per month
DigitalOcean
Score 8.9 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
Pricing
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Editions & Modules
Free Tier
$0
per month
Basic Environment
$100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment
$250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment
$600-$2500
per month
1GB-16GB
$5.00
Starting Price Per Month
8GB-160GB
$60.00
Starting Price Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Features
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Web Services
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
DigitalOcean
8.3
Ratings
3% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.30 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.70 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Monitoring tools7.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images6.50 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Operating system support8.20 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Security controls8.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Automation8.70 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Likelihood to Recommend
We are using RDS for the database services. With RDS, we don't have to manage much, as most of the DBA tasks are automated. For development purposes, we are using Kubernetes pods, which makes it easy to deploy applications and scale up as needed. AWS integration with in-house applications is seamless, making it easy to keep a data-sensitive application on-premises while still utilizing AWS services.
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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.
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Pros
  • Starting an instance and accessing it for testing purpose, demo or production deployment its always easy.
  • All the things which are available over AWS are pretty well managed and easy to use.
  • You might find everything you required for an product and other development over AWS.
  • Its suitable for both either an enterprise or an startup
  • Various resources and documentation are available in case you struck somewhere.
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  • Ease of use - You can get set up with a new server in a matter of minutes. It doesn't get any easier than that.
  • Support - The public forums are incredibly helpful as are the official help articles. I've never needed to contact the support team because of this. All of the information is at my fingertips.
  • Pricing - We're only paying $10/mo for a solution that gives our customers more confidence in us and is a selling point for us.
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Cons
  • The AWS Management Console can be overwhelming. so a better dashboard and organizing it would improve usability.
  • The pricing models are complex. We need a more clear price calculators and cost management tools to manage our expenses better.
  • Enhancements in cross service compatibility and easier third party integrations could streamline workflow.
  • Simplifying model training in SageMaker and improving IAM for granular access control would make AWS more user friendly
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  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
I would gladly rely on AWS for any large-scale application deployment. For prototyping and small-scale applications, a more heavily managed environment on top of the 'bare metal' virtual infrastructure, such as Heroku or Elastic Bean Stalk, is probably a more productive approach in most cases
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I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
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Usability
Amazon Web Services is a great tool when it comes to middle size organizations like us. It provides multiple tools and functionalities in low costs. The best feature we have to pay as we go. No financial burden on company for the unused instances. It also comes with greater level of security such as two level authorization such as multi factor authorization.
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With DigitalOcean it is very easy to start up a server/droplet. They have several templates and server images to select from, and they have good instructions on how to get a server set up and started. The monitoring tools in the dashboard look good and are easy to understand.
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Reliability and Availability
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
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Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
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Performance
AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
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Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
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Support Rating
The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
company because of its affordability and ease of use.
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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.
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Implementation Rating
The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
In my personal experience, AWS is superior to both GCP and Azure in the majority of usable applications. GCP suffers from the near total misunderstanding of how support system is even supposed to work, and while _some_ services are pretty nifty and well-polished, some are mindbogglingly designed black boxes with self-conflicting documentation. Some of it comes from having legacy systems, sure, but AWS somehow manages, even having a rather big lead start. Azure, from my limited experience, is limited to people somehow coerced into its usage by external constraints. That being said, IF you can design and implement something there, it will probably run fine.
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I chose DigitalOcean over Oracle Cloud because it's simpler, more cost-effective, and quicker to deploy. DigitalOcean’s intuitive interface allows me to manage servers easily, while Oracle Cloud is more complex and suited for larger enterprises. Also, DigitalOcean’s transparent pricing helps control costs, unlike Oracle’s more intricate and complex pricing model.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
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Return on Investment
  • Provisioning resources like large database instances is really quick. We can easily scale our instances up or down as per need.
  • Storing files in S3 instead of onprem NAS drives is much more economical, especially for the files stored in glacier deep archive for compliance purposes.
  • Backup snapshots of EBS volumes and RDS instances may increase the cost of cloud if not cleaned up properly.
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  • DigitalOcean has very competitive egress pricing, which has been positive for reducing our costs when running services with a large amounts of data transfer
  • DigitalOcean templates have helped us quickly launch services that would otherwise require a lot of configuration (saving time)
  • We haven't had much in the way of negative ROI impacts using DigitalOcean as we don't use it extensively for our core product, but based on personal project experience it can require more engineering time to get up and running with than some other infrastructure services like Heroku. This has been one of the greatest barriers in pushing its adoption in our organization.
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