DigitalOcean Review

Launching its first server in 2011, DigitalOcean is an American cloud hosting company focused on helping developers launch more apps faster and easier.

What started as a small start-up company based out of New York City has grown exponentially, reaching a customer base totaling over one million developers.

The ultimate goal of DigitalOcean is to use a solid-state drive, or SSD, to create a user-friendly platform that will allow their wealth of clients to transfer projects to and from the cloud, ramping up production with speed and efficiency.

But is it good enough to get our recommendation?

Let’s find out!

General Info & Hosting Overview

Pros of Using DigitalOcean Hosting

DigitalOcean excels in many areas.

Let’s have a closer look at each of these.

1. Great”Average” Uptime of 99.97%

DigitalOcean really excels in uptime, delivering an average of 99.97% over the last 6 months of monitoring.

That means that since January 2024 they have managed to keep the uptime 100% constantly, besides June 2024 when the uptime was only 99.83%. Without this poor month, Digital Ocean’s performance would have been a perfect 100%.

The average uptime for the past 6 months:

• June 2024: 99.83%
• May 2024: 100%
• April 2024: 100%
• March 2024: 100%
• February 2024: 100%
• January 2024: 100%

2. Lightning-Fast Load Times 272 ms

Uptime is the number one statistic to watch for when selecting a web host.

After all – every bell and whistle on the planet won’t account for a hill of beans if your website is spending long periods offline.

Coming in as a close second is speed.

Lagging websites might as well be ‘down’, for all intents and purposes. Sluggish sites are virtually unusable. Your traffic won’t hesitate to bounce. Literally. A difference of just a few seconds can cost you nearly all of your potential website traffic.

Luckily, slow speed is not something you have to be worried about when signing up with DigitalOcean.

Their past year’s average page loading time was 272 ms – one of the fastest we’ve seen!

3. Developer-Friendly Product Ecosystem

DigitalOcean is not just a one-trick pony. In fact, their suite of products offers tons of potential for developers.

What are the different options offered by DigitalOcean?

Glad you asked.

Droplets

Droplets is a scalable computing platform that can be customized to meet all of a business’s application needs. It also includes add-on storage, monitoring, and advanced security.

You can choose between standard or optimized droplets and then customize them to your heart’s content. Droplets let devs skip time-consuming installation and configuration to move right along toward code deployment.

Spaces

Whereas Droplets is for app deployment, Spaces is about simple object storage.

We’re talking about a security system that allows you to store and deliver data to applications and end-users. Spaces operate under a simple process, creating reliable storage with a drag-and-drop UI or API.

Spaces can be used to store backup files, weblogs, data analysis, and much more.

The service is also scalable, so your Spaces can grow with your company. What’s more – Spaces can be combined with other DigitalOcean features, or they can be used on their own.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes are designed for developers and operators.

What can you do with Kubernetes?

You can deploy your web applications for Kubernetes for easier scaling, higher availability, and lower costs. You can also use these for API and backend services.

4. Customizable Pricing

Even though we also have it under our cons, we think it’s pretty awesome that you can actually customize everything you pay for – your site storage, CPU usage, bandwidth, database, memory, etc.

It’s really a great advantage if you’re an advanced user and already familiar with exactly what you need, what your goals are, what you don’t need, and so on.

5. Daily Backups

DigitalOcean performs backups daily and you can always restore any data up to 7 days prior. Even though DigitalOcean has superior uptime, it’s always better to be safe than sorry!

6. Good Security

Your data and traffic are always secured. This is something that many other hosts don’t emphasize much or don’t even provide. DigitalOcean makes sure that your data is protected end-to-end. It’s a great advantage to keep those ill-willed connections and viruses out of your site system.

By default, DigitalOcean has added encryption to its volumes. If you want to add an additional layer of security, like with most of their features, you’ll have to go through a tutorial, follow the steps, and know some coding in order to succeed.

Cons of Using DigitalOcean Hosting

DigitalOcean started out strong, however, there are also some drawbacks that need to be noted out.

Let’s have a closer look.

1. For Advanced Users

The mark of a truly great product lies in its ability to summarize its services in layman’s terms.

This is something tech companies, in particular, have a hard time wrapping their collective heads around.

As such, most tech sites and platforms tend to be full of jargon. As in, “special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand”.

When one looks at tech products like DigitalOcean, the temptation to resort to jargon-based language becomes clear. You’re dealing with a lot of technical data – an expert in the field would be compelled to write it as they know it, and not how the average human being can understand it.

That’s no big deal for the advanced, power users. They’ll get it. It’ll all make sense.

But for the beginners? Not a chance.

This is an area in which DigitalOcean fails dramatically. The site’s copy is filled with technical terms and acronyms with no explanation. They’re clearly marketing their product to developers specifically.

Therefore, others will struggle to figure out how to move a site over, launch, maintain, or even grow their website.

In comparison, Dreamhost does an amazing job of simplifying the language of their website into terms that an average person understands comprehensively.

2. Lacks Basic Features Other Consumer Hosts Provide

Most web hosts we’ve reviewed will throw in the same ‘extras.’ For example, backups, possibly a good CDN, and even an SSL certificate.

Unlike others, because DigitalOcean caters to a more advanced crowd, they don’t throw in a bunch of basic features that many other hosts will provide or take care of for you after signing up.

Stuff like:

• Free domain name with hosting
• The ability to even purchase a domain name
• Free site migrations

Meaning, they can help you with some of these things. But you shouldn’t expect a lot of hand-holding services when you sign up.

This actually brings us to our next point.

3. Limited Customer Support

Most hosting companies offer some variation of 24/7 support.

It might not always be very good, but at least it’s something.

Unfortunately, DigitalOcean has nothing like that. If your website goes down in the middle of the night (which could be disastrous if you’re dealing in overseas markets), there’s no one for you to talk to. You have to go to their website and open a support ticket using their online form.

4. Complicated cPanel

As been mentioned already, DigitalOcean is definitely not for beginners. Basically, a cPanel is what you need to build your website nowadays (unless you’re on good terms with programming languages).

For DigitalOcean, to start with, you’ll need to set up a Droplet of your choice (DigitalOcean servers). Then you’ll need to install the cPanel following a thorough guide involving inserting several code commands (yes, you have to know some coding), registering your account, installing the execution file, etc.

On top of all the other stuff, you’ll need to purchase the right from a third party to use the cPanel.

If you have no experience with coding and how to be a developer yourself, we suggest, you either hire a developer (a good one) or avoid DigitalOcean and find solutions that suit your needs and skills more.

The usability of cPanel is relatively intuitive, but then again – there’s a learning curve and it’s definitely not for beginners.

5. Pricing is Complicated

Once you get into the pricing plans, you’ll head will go dizzy with all the options and possibilities which you can use and upgrade. There are different categories for bandwidth, space, servers (different speeds), CPU, security options, etc.

Simply put – with DigitalOcean there are lots of ways to make your monthly fee really-really pricey.

Most other providers offer 2-5 different plans which give you a good overview of what you get. With DigitalOcean you can customize everything yourself.

It can be a good thing, but unless you’re an advanced user (as mentioned above), it’s rather complicated and time-consuming.

DigitalOcean Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

DigitalOcean’s Standard Droplets plan starts out at $5 per month. The prices rise from there, getting higher and higher until you’re paying $80 per month for more high-end services:

When you look at the CPU Optimized Droplets, those are starting at $40 and going all the way up to a whopping $720 per month:

Quick Facts

• Ease of Signup: Quite easy (you can sign up with email, Google Account, or GitHub)
• Free domain: Not free.
• Money Back: No. Pricing is based on the pay-as-you-go model.
• Payment Methods: All major Debit and Credit Cards, PayPal.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: No major ones.
• Upsells: A few upsells.
• Account Activation: Account activation is quick.
• Control Panel and Dashboard: Custom control panel (with cPanel option)
• Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): One-click installer for WordPress and other apps/CMSs.

Do We Recommend DigitalOcean?

Yes…

… as long as you’re a developer.

If you’re just an average person looking to launch a web presence, there are far more user-friendly products out there that will cost you far less.

For someone that knows their way around the tech world, there seems to be no faster or more highly performing product than DigitalOcean.

There are a few drawbacks but if uptime and speed are the most important factors for you, DigitalOcean is among the best choices on the market.

Do you have any positive or negative experience with DigitalOcean’s hosting? If you do, please consider leaving a review.