Summary: What We Think of Digital Ocean
Cloud hosting can be a little daunting for many people in the first place, but Digital Ocean has made that doubly so with the liberal use of self-developed technical jargon. For layman unfamiliar with the company, start by exploring “Droplets” – their unique term for “cloud hosting solution”. That said, Digital Ocean is a highly modular and scalable environment with many advanced, developer-friendly features. Everything here is priced independently, so you’re really paying for only what you need.
Suitable for:
eCommerce, Enterprise, Developers-friendly, or Adult Website
Website: https://www.digitalocean.com/
Digital Ocean Pros & Cons
Digital Ocean Pros
- Outstanding server uptime and speed performance
- Competitive and flexible pricing model
- Choice of 15 distributed data centers
- Highly configurable virtual machines
- Built-in alert system for resource thresholds or critical issues
Digital Ocean Cons
- Charges apply for automated backups
- Unencrypted backups
- Only suitable for advanced users
- Less user-friendly for team operations
Visit Digital Ocean to learn more about the features
About Digital Ocean
Established in 2011, DigitalOcean was founded by Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky, Mitch Wainer, Jeff Carr, and Alec Hartman. Originating from their prior venture, ServerStack, DigitalOcean was crafted to simplify cloud computing for software developers. With a mission to empower developers in building, deploying, and scaling cloud applications effortlessly, DigitalOcean has grown substantially, offering accessible, high-performance, and cost-effective cloud solutions tailored to the needs of software developers and small-scale startups.
Digital Ocean Server Performance, Security Features, Customer Support & Ideal Use Cases
Up next, we’ll evaluate Digital Ocean in essential areas and find out if it’s a good fit for different use cases.
Is Digital Ocean Good in Terms of Uptime & Speed Performance?
Overall, yes. However, note that Digital Ocean is more of an infrastructure provider. There isn’t much built-in speed features for the users; however price is relatively cheaper and users has total freedom to configure their own server.
The company publishes their server and network service status publicly, click here to visit.
Are Your Websites Safe with Digital Ocean’s Security Measures?
DigitalOcean offers a solid set of security features, though it’s important to note that DigitalOcean operates differently from traditional hosting companies we’ve reviewed. As a cloud infrastructure platform, DigitalOcean offers more control to developers, meaning security often requires more manual configuration compared to fully managed hosting.
Security measures include DDoS protection to defend against malicious traffic and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network isolation. Users can set up custom firewalls and easily integrate third-party security tools. Two-factor authentication (2FA) strengthens account security, and data encryption is applied both in transit and at rest.
While not a traditional managed hosting solution, DigitalOcean offers flexibility and powerful security tools for those who prefer greater control over their hosting environment. When configured properly, these features ensure your website is well-protected against common threats.
What Can You Expect from Digital Ocean’s Customer Support?
As infrastructure provider, Digital Ocean offers a different level of support compared to managed hosting services. Their support is more focused on infrastructure-related issues and is less about spoonfeeding detailed guidance on website or application development. While essential support for technical issues with their platforms is there, users generally need a higher level of technical expertise to manage and troubleshoot their applications. In case you need help, you can reach out to Digital Ocean’s support via email.
Is Digital Ocean’s Pricing Justified by the Value and Features It Offers?
Known for its straightforward pricing, Digital Ocean primarily targets developers with its range of scalable ‘Droplets’ (cloud servers). It offers predictable, flat-rate pricing with various tiers based on CPU, memory, and storage resources. This makes it appealing for businesses and individuals looking for clear, no-surprise billing.
How does Digital Ocean Rank in Overall Market Satisfaction?
Based on customer feedback from HostScore, Trustpilot, and G2 – Digital Ocean customers are singing praises for its affordable hosting plans, flexible server setup, and outstanding speed performance. Overall, they are one of the top cloud hosting choices for many users.
For additional insights, please refer to the user reviews section below.
Is Digital Ocean A Good Option for Beginners?
No, we do not think Digital Ocean is suitable for beginners with modest web hosting needs. Its complex setup and configuration, combined with the technical skills required, can be challenging for those without substantial web development experience. While Digital Ocean offers a highly scalable and powerful environment, it’s less suited for those seeking a more straightforward and cost-effective hosting solution.
Is Digital Ocean A Good Choice for Small Businesses?
Similarly, Digital Ocean may not be an ideal choice for small businesses – especially if you don’t require high levels of website scalability or have complex hosting needs. The platform’s focus on modular cloud pricing and a technically demanding environment can pose challenges for small business owners lacking extensive technical expertise. While it offers powerful, scalable solutions, these features are more aligned with the needs of high-volume online shops or web developers with advanced skills. Small businesses seeking simpler, more straightforward hosting solutions might find Digital Ocean’s offerings to be an overkill.
Is Digital Ocean Good for Web Developers?
Digital Ocean is an excellent choice for experienced web developers, offering an environment that’s ideal for high-performance sites and a range of deployable features. Its scalable, high-powered infrastructure and advanced tools align well with the technical skills and demands of seasoned developers.
Is It Possible to Host Custom Email with Digital Ocean?
No, you cannot host your own email accounts with Digital Ocean. To do this, you will need to utilize a third-party email provider like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 at additional cost.
How Easy Is the Onboarding Process with Digital Ocean?
The onboarding process with Digital Ocean is surprisingly quick and easy. All you need is to fill out a few details and provide your billing information, then you will be let loose into their control area. This works out well since you won’t be charged yet and you can explore to your heart’s content.
Does Digital Ocean Offer a Free Trial?
Yes, Digital Ocean offers a 30-day free trial period. If you are not satisfied with their services for any reason, you can cancel within this period and receive a full refund.
Try now: Visit & Sign Up at Digital Ocean Official Website
Digital Ocean Plans & Pricing
Digital Ocean offers more customizable cloud services, allowing users to tailor their server’s resources such as CPU, RAM, and storage to their specific needs.
How Much Does Digital Ocean Cost?
- Cloud Hosting: Starting from $4 – $96 per month
- WordPress Hosting: Starting from $14 – $3569.98 per month
Caution: Consider Long Term Cost Hosting providers often offer low signup rates that rise significantly upon renewal. To avoid surprises, it’s important to compare renewal rates alongside the introductory offers to understand the true long-term cost. Also, web hosting prices can change frequently – For up-to-date pricing information, please visit the official Digital Ocean website.
Final Thought: Is Digital Ocean Right for You?
Diving into Digital Ocean, you’re greeted with a cloud hosting realm that caters specifically to the tech-savvy and developers. It’s a world of highly flexible virtual machines, backed by a competitive pricing strategy that’s hard to beat. Yet, this ocean has its depths—its complexity and the extra charges for automated backups might make newcomers or those in search of simplicity think twice.
A treasure for the experienced, but the uninitiated may need to navigate its waters carefully.
I had a problem with a payment, the problem was with my bank, they responded quickly and gave me advice on how I can do it differently. Everything worked out. This company attracts me with its very responsive support and willingness to help its customers.
Constantly noticing repetitive “guest” access from DigitalOcean IP addresses on our forum access screen. Constantly having to update our blocked IP address lists as we have no idea what these access attempts are or why but I can only assume they are hosting searchbots or scanning software for AI companies.
DigitalOcean is easy to use and was very simple for me to get started and up and running. The user interface is also very intuitive. Importantly, their support was really prompt and just the best.
I contacted DigitalOcean’s technical support regarding some issues with my cloud server migration. Based on past experiences with other cloud providers, I didn’t expect much. However, I was pleasantly surprised by their prompt and friendly response, along with clear instructions to follow. Solving the problem required some patience due to DNS propagation. Not only was the initial response excellent, but they also followed up on the issue until it was fully resolved. It was an amazing experience that truly exceeded my expectations.
My credit card is leaked and the speed of VPS is too slow as well as often disconnect.
Update: The support team helped me recover my account. I am going to change rates from 1 to 4.
I have been using DigitalOcean servers since 2015 and I have not been disappointed once in all these years. Their interface and concepts are very intuitive and using it is not considered a skill (as products should preferably be). I have no complaint regarding the responsiveness of the servers and the prices are very affordable.
I can feel their support tried their best to help me resolve the issue by providing fruitful information even my questions was stupid or half lazy
Their support team is very knowledgable, eager to help and patient.
DigitalOcean support team was quick to respond and gave a thorough response. Most of the time customer service teams string you along only giving you one bit of info to fix a situation but DigitalOcean gave multiple possible fixes and prepared me for the next step, even though I didn’t end up needing it.
Digital Ocean consistently provides excellent service, ensuring smooth and reliable performance for all my needs. What truly sets them apart is their exceptional customer support. Whenever I require assistance, their team responds quickly and offers clear, helpful solutions. It’s a pleasure to work with a service that prioritizes customer satisfaction and efficiency. Highly recommended!
They are always very responsive and helpful. It’s good to cooperate in such a way. The articles they have are also spot on and I’m always searching for digital ocean and the topic in the relevant search criteria to get things effectively done.
I recently had the pleasure of working with DigitalOcean’s tech support team to resolve an issue I was having with my domain name and DNS. The issue was caused by a misconfiguration on my part, but the support team was very patient and helpful in guiding me through the process of fixing it.
They were able to quickly identify the root cause of my issue and provide me with clear and concise instructions on how to resolve it.
DigitalOcean became a good choice for my businesses that need a high level of security and performance. This is a good choice for businesses that need a cost-effective and easy-to-use solution. I observed one thing, DigitalOcean, DedicatedCore, and Interserver these three vps companies offer a range of security features to protect our important data. The best option for those who have security concerns
Digital Ocean is one of the best cloud companies. Friendly support, and affordable prices. The best solution for developers!!!
Terrible experience so far! Very bad support, nobody can provide proper support, ignoring you. They will try to charge you right away for nothing. Very bad indicator, showing that company’s financial state is not in good shape. Looks like they are trying to inflate their revenue by doing these none sense charges from customers. We tried to register account, without even selecting any product, they tried to charge us with random numbers. They didn`t accept 3 credit cards, and with 4th one as mentioned above they tried to charge is with some random number. Can`t get any explanation from their support. Time to look for alternatives.
Update:
So I am in contact with account manager from DO. Now he is saying that DO is charging 5$ only to activate account. So without even buying anything customer has to pay . But even with that , DO tried to charge 12.09$ . We deposited to the card 10$ specifically to activate it , but with DO trying to charge random amounts it doesn’t seem to be possible even
You responded quickly and sincerely. Dyeing it makes you feel very friendly. It is a big company after all.
Although my application was rejected several times, I recognize your company’s seriousness and candor. Unfortunately, I just don’t know why I was rejected. I suggest that I explain the reasons to the applicant in the future.
I just created an account with them, and they blocked me right from the start, with the excuse to “Protect the internet”, with no means for me to appeal their decision and no further explanation of why this happened, I told them I would gladly provide proof of identity via video face recognition KYC verification etc. like most companies do when they need to check upon their customers. Went on some Reddit forums and internet blogs and several users have had this happen to them also, even paying customers that had their data lost. I would certainly not recommend this company as right from the start something as easy and simple as creating an account is not possible.
Digital Ocean has fantastic tools for web application development, and when things don’t go quite right they have prompt, knowledgable support staff on hand to help.
Great stuff!
I experienced poor customer service due to an error on the server that was acknowledged to be on their side. When I requested a refund, my concern was unfortunately ignored. Additionally, my initial review appears to have been removed, prompting me to share my experience again. I hope this feedback will be taken seriously and addressed appropriately.
1. Extreme reliability and cost/effectiveness.
2. Tech support is responsive and effective even in night or weekend hours.
(I use their services for more than 10 years now…)
I have been on the Web since 2008 but never got such a service. The team is ever ready to make your Web presence as fruitful and gives you the confidence of having a Web presence even though you may be going tough times making your marks. They give you the time to settle by being of a proverbial comprehension. Keep up the good work. We need support like that to progress. Proud to have opted to be among digital swimmers
Just noticed that the oldest server I have is more than 7 years old, and I’ve never left a review. Yes, people tend to write reviews when they want to complain, shame on me
I’ve used many different cloud providers and none of them even close to DO by the combination of quality/price/UX/support.
I always challenge the status quo and try to find something better that I currently use, and I always find that DigitalOcean is the best.
Please, keep up the great work!
Helping recover my account was the best thing that happened to me as I lost revenue due to the downtime.
I love digitalocean services.
I believe the integration of a life support system will go a long way to assist people like me when we encounter service challenges. Time is a great factor in any business. Also, improvement of your response time to email and tickets. I have complained before now about my account issue was raised some month back and no one responded to me.
Really a good company that supports students with a free $200 for one year of learning development. I am really thankful to Digital Ocean. I hosted the sajjadalibabar.live website at Digital Ocean for free at the start of my learning.
I am beginer in IT, i do support LAN PBX, but i know little about website, hosting, domain…etc it sound unfamilier for me. but Ocean digital support team do great job walk me through to solve a problem patiently
Fast response to my ticket, Knowledgeable staff. Was able to investigate and find the problem even though it was something I did on my end!
Thanks Digital Ocean, been a customer for years!
Quick replies, professional and non insulting. I’m a retired Sr Systems Engineer 2009, contracting at banks, Healthcare companies, IBM Complex deals hosting, with every enterprise OS and VCS, GPFS, VxVm, HACMP, and felt like I was at work on a new project I had no idea about and emails were coming in with answers from those who knew. THANK YOU ALL!
Ayman helped me with amazing customer service and so fast on reply! Thanks to Digital ocean for great service and products.
Thanks Ayman for helping and hope your managers see your great service to clients!
I’ve only been using Digitalocean about 2 days but iam very satisfied with it so far. The support has been prompt and responsive and the control panel interface is simple and intuitive.
I’ll update my review after using it for a month
I’ll give 5 stars for their fast response in solving our concern. We appreciate their quick action, just like a reliable teammate whom we can trust when we need a helping hand. Good job to your customer support team.
– Ayahtek Team
We had an issue of logging in to the account because we used different locations and the security system reacted accordingly. But after providing everything what has been requested we got this issue resolved very fast and easy.
Thanks to the team for very quick and productive help.
We didn’t even start to feel stress even thought the server is very important part of any project and to have access to it is essential.
DigitalOcean makes things so easy as a novice cloud dev. I’ve tried to use AWS for my needs in the past and found it to be too complicated and expensive. With DigitalOcean, it’s just a few clicks and then I’m configuring my services (successfully for the first time at that!).
Support was very fast. within 45 mins they responded to my ticket. resolved and closed. This really give me confidence and trust. I considering/testing a migration from AWS to digital ocean cause your are more competitively priced for smaller and medium apps. thank you.
If you’re an experienced web developer, I recommend DigitalOcean.
If you’re a normal person trying to establish an online presence, there are many more user-friendly options available for significantly less money.
There appears to be no faster or more well-performing solution for someone who understands their way around the tech world than DigitalOcean.
There are a few downsides, but if uptime and speed are your top priorities, DigitalOcean is one of the best options on the market.