DigitalOcean Review – Is It Worth It?

While DigitalOcean’s cloud service is primarily aimed at developers, it also offers everyone with high-performance, globally available public clouds. DigitalOcean offers several noteworthy features (to determine its final cost). Simple design and pricing are the first things to consider. Furthermore, all levels of its design are clean. In addition to its ease of use and efficiency, DigitalOcean also performs well.

Overview of Digital Ocean

DigitalOcean launched its first server in 2011, offering developers a fast and easy way to launch more apps. Over one million people now use the services of this New York City-based start-up.

With SSDs, DigitalOcean is aiming to build a platform that allows its clients to transfer projects to and from the cloud quickly, enabling them to speed up production. The simplicity, robust infrastructure, and low prices of Digital Ocean’s cloud servers have made it one of the most popular cloud hosting providers.

Linux and Unix servers are available on DigitalOcean’s cloud across 12 data centers. Various configuration options are available for those servers, including virtual CPUs with up to 32 cores, solid-state drives, and a range of services. There is no additional charge for most of them. A monthly fee of $20 is charged for load balancers.

Types of hosting available	VPS, Shared, SSD, and WordPress Hosting
Price Range	Starting Price Range: $5.0/mo.
Free SSL Certificate	Yes
Free Professional Email	Yes
Storage	Storage: 25 GB SSD and Bandwidth: 1 TB
Speed and Uptime	99.97% uptime
Best for	All Types of Sites
Extra Features	One Click Installer, Best Uptime, Easy to Use, Cheap Price

Best Features

Uptime and Reliability

To ensure 100% uptime and top speed for their customers, Digital Ocean has strategically established various data centers in America and Europe. As of now, they operate primary data centers in New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. Using proactive management tools and monitoring 24/7, their data centers have an efficient security system. Extreme weather conditions are not a problem for their data center. A backup power supply is available at every center in case of a power outage. You can count on them to back up your data frequently.

The company compensates the website owner based on the duration of downtime in case of downtime. It shows that they care about customer satisfaction and are confident in their services.

Tools and Integrations

The company also offers APIs, one-click installers, and web-based control panels and command lines. However, some people have had issues with the one-click installers. Several common dev tools are integrated and collaboration tools for teams. If you’re able to get the Slack integration working first, it can even integrate with Slack.

Good Security

You can always trust your data and traffic to be secure. Many other hosts don’t even provide this or do not emphasize it much at all. DigitalOcean guarantees end-to-end data security. Maintaining a healthy website system is very beneficial in preventing malicious connections and viruses. The default encryption is enabled on DigitalOcean volumes. The tutorial, steps, and coding knowledge are required if you wish to add an additional layer of security.

eCommerce and SSL certificate:

We’re going to check whether Digital Ocean offers eCommerce features in our Digital Ocean review. Several free eCommerce platforms, such as Magento, can be easily integrated with Digital Ocean. You can find an e-commerce platform on DigitalOcean Marketplace. According to the platform, an enterprise-ready eCommerce website can be built in just 60 minutes.

Using DigitalOcean DNS to manage your domain allows you to use Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. A DigitalOcean trial is available for you to test the platform.

Collaboration and Reliability

Creating DigitalOcean-enabled apps has been made extremely easy by the company. Teams work together, yet the credentials are not shared, allowing security to be compromised. Each team is billed all together in one invoice.

However, “Floating IPs” are provided by the company to strengthen its reliability further. Whatever the case may be, a standby droplet is assigned in case the primary droplet fails.

Ease of Use

Easy use is our top priority in this DigitalOcean review. An overly complex product would not be recommended. It will be difficult for users to launch, manage, and grow their website if the hosting is difficult to use. So, we can say right off the bat that Digital Ocean is not a good choice in this regard.

The product is powerful, but not everyone will benefit from it. It would be easy to use the platform if you are a seasoned developer. However, what if you are a typical user? There is very little chance of you succeeding.

In addition, there is a lack of intuitiveness in the dashboard. It is important to know that cPanel does not come for free; you must purchase a license. Beginners may have trouble comprehending even the website copy. A steep learning curve awaits novices using Digital Ocean, as it is clearly a developer’s tool. DigitalOcean offers a free trial if you want to try it out.

What is our verdict on the ease of use of DigitalOcean? Beginners should not use this program. It’s great for advanced users.

Types of Hosting Does DigitalOcean Offering

A key selling point of DigitalOcean is its wide range of plans. Individuals and companies can both benefit from this flexibility. You won’t have any trouble finding a solution that fits your needs. A standard plan offers between one and four servers and 4 GB to 8 GB of memory.

According to the plan, TB transfer rates can range from 1 to 5, and SSD disk space ranges from 20 GB to 80 GB. Among the most popular plans are:

1 GB memory
1 core processor
30 GB SSD disk
2 TB transfer

For developers who need a high-volume plan, DigitalOcean also offers it.

Each type of hosting has its own advantages and disadvantages, and many different types are available for your business. The following sections provide an overview of the most popular hosting services.

WordPress Hosting

More than 60 million people across the world use WordPress as their content management system (CMS).

With DigitalOcean, WordPress hosting solutions can be installed with one click. WordPress can be installed in just 55 seconds, according to the company. In addition to storage and memory capacities, the hosting company offers specific packages based on the needs of your business.

Shared Hosting

There are many hosting options available on the market, but shared hosting is one of the most popular. This option is usually the cheapest, but it’s typically the worst when it comes to server performance and available resources. There are various websites competing for space and resources on a single server when it is shared by several.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Shared hosting is commonly seen as a stepping stone to VPS hosting (Virtual Private Servers). Shared hosting plans may not be adequate for your business if you require higher performance.

Each virtual server is dedicated exclusively to one website, usually from a server that has been split into several smaller ones. This means that website does not compete for space and resources on the server.

SSD (Solid State Drive)

In addition to using SSD storage on all of their servers, DigitalOcean hosting offers a number of other benefits. There are no moving parts on SSD servers, unlike those with HDDs. Their performance is exponentially higher than that of others because they work faster. By doing this, you will be able to reach your customers more quickly than your competitors.

Customer Support

Having a proper channel of contact with your web host provider is one of the most important elements; if there is any issue, you can resolve it as soon as possible. Live chat and ticketing are options for customer support offered by Digital Ocean; a ticket must include your name, email, subject, and issue. Within an hour, they respond to your ticket. On their website, you can also chat with an agent live; it takes a few minutes. Their agents have a great deal of patience, helpfulness, and experience. There are many web host forums where customers appreciate the support provided by Digitalocean.

You can also reach them via Twitter and Facebook. For everything you need to learn, Digital Ocean has step-by-step tutorials available. Understanding them doesn’t require technical expertise.

DigitalOcean Pricing Plans:

DigitalOcean uses a pay-as-you-go model for estimating its costs. Your plan includes customizable features such as servers, space, bandwidth, security, CPU, etc. On the other hand, a clear-cut price structure is something that other web hosting providers don’t offer. As a beginner, you can easily get lost or confused.

As a rough estimate, here are the costs of DigitalOcean:

The cost of a standard Droplet begins at $5 per month. DigitalOcean costs for Droplets increase if you choose more advanced features.
Monthly prices begin at $40 for CPU-optimised droplets and can reach $720.

Refund and Money Back Guarantee Policy

The Digital Ocean trial is available for this review of the service. Using DigitalOcean is free for 60 days with a $100 credit. DigitalOcean free credit may be used for any of DigitalOcean’s services for up to $100 within this period. A charge will be made to your credit card if you go over the limit. Refunds are not available on the platform.

What Are the Pros and Cons of DigitalOcean Hosting?

Pros

Their app engine is simple, economical, scalable, and adaptable for web development, rest API, and software development.
It is easy and affordable to enable droplet backups.
Tutorials and documentation are excellent.
The quality of the server is excellent.

Cons

Beginners might find it a little difficult.
It might take some time to set up the server, even if you are not new to this.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1: Is DigitalOcean cheaper than Google cloud?

Answer: When compared with the higher prices of Google Cloud Platform, DigitalOcean is definitely on the cheaper end of the cloud hosting spectrum. DigitalOcean easily wins this round.

Question 2: Is DigitalOcean good for beginners?

Answer: A beginner should definitely avoid DigitalOcean, as stated already. The most common way to build a website these days is with a cPanel (unless you know how to program). The first step with DigitalOcean is to create a Droplet (DigitalOcean server) of your choosing.

Conclusion

Developers are the primary target audience for DigitalOcean. You shouldn’t use DigitalOcean if you only need simple web hosting and don’t care about technical details. I recommend a few web hosts: MochaHost, Vultr, Namecheap, and Media Temple.

For developers who want more control over their servers and flexibility, DigitalOcean may be a good option. Those who prefer self-sufficient development and server management should choose this company.