Are you confused between DigitalOcean and AWS cloud solutions? If the answer is yes, you must read this DigitalOcean vs AWS review that will break down all important differences including the pricing.
Let us first start with the background and understand the two companies.
- What is DigitalOcean?
- What is AWS [Amazon Web Services]?
- DataCenters: Which of the two has a better presence?
- Product Range: AWS or DigitalOcean, Which One Offers More?
- DigitalOcean Products
- AWS Products
- DigitalOcean Vs AWS Pricing: Which One Is Affordable?
- DigitalOcean Pricing
- AWS Pricing
- Conclusion: DigitalOcean Vs AWS
What is DigitalOcean?
2011 was the year when this developer-focused cloud solutions provider was started, we call it “DigitalOcean” today.
DigitalOcean is an American company with its head office in NY. Today, they are growing and expanding their reach with their offices in New York, Cambridge, and Bangalore.
DigitalOcean will help you deploy Droplets, VMs and Kubernetes that are developer-friendly and reliable.
Today, Digital Ocean has its customers in over 195 countries.
Founders of DigitalOcean are in this cloud hosting business since 2003 when they started ServerStack. In the year 2011, they decided to get started with a DigitalOcean. Since then there is no looking back and the DigitalOcean has attracted the investor’s interest and growing multi-folds.
Also check our Alternatives and Competitors of Digitalocean.
What is AWS [Amazon Web Services]?
Amazon Web Services or AWS was started by its parent company “Amazon” in the year 2002. In the year 2006, they also entered into the business of cloud computing.
Like DigitalOcean, AWS is also an American brand that has its registered office in Seattle, Washington, USA.
AWS reported revenue of approx $46 billion last year as compared to $318.4 million by DigitalOcean.
Talking about the scale, AWS should be compared to leading players like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. DigitalOcean offers a limited array of services as compared to AWS. However, this doesn’t mean that for customers, DigitalOcean is not advisable.
AWS has been scaling its broad spectrum of services like IaaS), (PaaS), and even Software as a Service (SaaS), DigitalOcean on the other hand is limited to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
With multiple reductions in prices, Amazon AWS is gearing itself to stay ahead of the competition with Google Cloud and Azure.
We will now begin with our actual AWS and DigitalOcean comparison on various parameters below.
DataCenters: Which of the two has a better presence?
Now we will compare the reach of AWS and Digitalocean in terms of datacenter presence. With this, you will be able to find out which of the two [AWS or DigitalOcean] is better for your upcoming project?
Where are the Datacenters of DigitalOcean?
DigitalOcean provides you the datacenters that are spread in multiple geographies of the world and you can reach your audience fast choosing the right one for you.
Let’s have a quick look at DigitalOcean’s server locations:
- Amsterdam
- Bangalore
- Singapore
- Frankfurt
- London
- Toronto
- New York
- San Francisco
Where are the Datacenters of AWS?
AWS offers you almost double locations as compared to DreamOcean. They have more locations [almost 15] that you can choose for your cloud server.
Here is the list of AWS’s server locations:
- Seoul
- Mumbai
- Singapore
- Sydney
- Tokyo
- Central
- Beijing
- Frankfurt
- Ireland
- London
- Sao Paulo
- N. Virginia
- OhioUS
- Oregon
- N. California
Product Range: AWS or DigitalOcean, Which One Offers More?
If you are trying to compare the product basket of DigitalOcean vs AWS, we would say, there is actually no comparison. AWS is far ahead when it comes to solutions that are being offered.
DigitalOcean Products
DigitalOcean is a renowned name in cloud computing products for developers and tech-savvy customers.
If you are choosing DigitalOcean, you will get access to the following products list:
- Droplets
- Kubernetes
- App Platform
- Online Object and Volume Block Storage
- Managed DataBases [MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis]
- Networking products [VPC, Cloud Firewall, DNS]
- Developer Tools [API, CLI, DO button, etc]
They do not provide CDN services and various other products that you get with AWS.
Interested in comparing the product’s list of AWS? Let’s begin.
AWS Products
AWS by Amazon offers over 200 products to its customers. Some of the best and most selling commonly used products are:
- Amazon EC2
- Amazon S3
- Glacier
- Lambda
- Amazon CloudFront CDN
- AWS SNS
- Elastic Block Store
- AWS Kinesis
- Simple Que Service
- AWS Virtual Private Cloud
- Aurora
- Light Sail
- SageMaker
Do you know, AWS offers upto 100 services in its Free tier?
Using this link, you can access some of the services free for a lifetime, a few for a year and balance for predefined hours. If you are not sure of the product’s reliability, and usability, try them first before you buy.
You may be a student or a Fortune 500 company, this program is for all.
Anyone seeking cloud computing, cloud database storage, CDN, or a readymade IT solution, Amazon AWS is easy to use and reliable service provider.
AWS or DigitalOcean, Which one is better if Product Range is your priority?
Someone looking for more product range to build and scale the business must choose AWS. If we have to compare the product range of DigitalOcean Vs AWS, without any doubt, AWS is the winner.
DigitalOcean Vs AWS Pricing: Which One Is Affordable?
We will now compare the pricing of DigitalOcean and AWS. However, it is not easy as the products are not exactly the same.
Apart from that, AWS offers at least 20x more services than DigitalOcean. Hence products that are now available with DO cannot be compared with AWS.
Still, we will have a look at the pricing of some popular products of both the companies.
DigitalOcean Pricing
DigitalOcean offers a pretty simple and easy-to-understand pricing model. Not only that, their products as designed for beginner’s budget as well as enterprise budget, similarly like AWS.
- A droplet of DigitalOcean will start from $5, you get 1GB RAM, 1Core CPU, and 1000GB Bandwidth. The top-end plan that offers 256 GB RAM and 32vCPU will go up to $2480.
- If you are looking forward to choosing a Kubernetes cluster, you can buy this service starting at $10/m.
- Container Registry offers you a free tier but with limited storage of 500MB. For 5GB storage and transfer, you just have to pay $5 per month.
- App platform where you can also host static sites also offers Free tier but with limited option. The basic APP platform with a full list of features is available starting at $5 for a month.
- Managed Databases start from $15/month.
- Object storage service with 250 GB storage for as low as $5 per month.
As you can see from the list above, DigitalOcean’s pricing is affordable and predictable as well.
AWS Pricing
AWS’s pricing is based on the consumption [Pay-as-you-go] model. They offer certain services in their Free Tier so that you can check the performance.
However, once the trial period is over, the following hourly rates will be applied:
- Amazon EC2 starts at $0.0255 per hour. Apart from data, Data-in / Data out will also be applied. Exact pricing can be calculated using their pricing calculator.
- Amazon Lightsail Linux Server comes for fixed monthly pricing that starts at only $3.5 per month.
- For Windows-based Lightsail, you need to pay $8 per month.
- Amazon S3 storage costs you $0.023 per month. Transfer and Requests charges are extra.
- Managed Databases service Amazon Aurora also provides you “Pay-As-You-
go” pricing.
For all Amazon products, please visit the Pricing calculator and prepare the estimate basis the usage you expect.
Conclusion: DigitalOcean Vs AWS
Can we compare DigitalOcean with AWS? The answer is no actually. DigitalOcean is the right fit for developers and small enterprises that are seeking instant deployment of VM. AWS is a leading player that is even bigger than Google Cloud and Azure, which provides Paas and IaaS services. Amazon AWS is a big mammoth with over 200 products in multiple niches.
Here is the summary of feature differences between DigitalOcean and AWS in tabular form, making it easy to understand.
| Features | DigitalOcean | AWS |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud GPUs | No | Yes |
| Kubernetes | Yes | Yes |
| App Marketplace | Yes | Yes |
| Flat Fixed Pricing | Yes | No |
| DataCenter [Number of Regions] | 8 | 24 |
| Number of Products | 21+ | 200+ |
| Operational Since | 2011 | 2002 |
| Transfer Bundled Products | Yes | No |
| Managed Databases | Yes | Yes |
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About Author: Vishesh Gupta
Seasoned Professional with 15 years of experience in Sales and Marketing. Entrepreneur, Consultant and Blogger helping people earn through jobs and blogging. Experienced Hosting Reviewer who likes to collect detailed info about existing players and share it with my audience. Previously worked with leading Banks and Telecom Companies.
I completed my Masters in Management with specialization in Finance and Marketing.
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