As both a seasoned cloud infrastructure analyst and a startup founder who has deployed hundreds of servers on DigitalOcean and AWS, I get asked constantly: "Which is better: DO or AWS?"
It seems like a simple question. But the reality is that comparing these cloud platforms is no small feat, given the dozens of factors at play.
That‘s why I decided to write the ultimate 2023 update comparing DigitalOcean and Amazon Web Services (AWS) head-to-head.
Consider this your one-stop-shop cloud provider smackdown! By the end, you‘ll have all the intel needed to determine whether DO or AWS is a better fit your use case.
Let‘s dive in!
A Brief Background on DigitalOcean and AWS
Before evaluating product features, it‘s helpful to understand where each company comes from…
DigitalOcean‘s Origins
DigitalOcean was founded in 2011 by Ben and Moisey Uretsky and has since focused exclusively on one thing: making cloud infrastructure simple for developers.
With simplistic pricing and preconfigured virtual machines optimized for running apps, DigitalOcean (or "DO") appealed to solo devs and startups. Their first data center opened in New York City in 2012.
Flash forward to today, and DO now operates 13 data centers globally while serving over 700,000 businesses. Though they‘ve expanded capabilities over the years, ease of use and affordability remain central to their positioning.
A look back at DigitalOcean‘s first decade according to their own metrics
AWS Overview
Amazon Web Services began offering cloud infrastructure services in 2006 alongside Amazon‘s booming ecommerce operations.
Their goal was likewise to empower companies to avoid investing in expensive on-prem servers. Early customers included Airbnb, General Electric, and Pfizer.
Today, over 200 unique cloud services now fall under the AWS umbrella. And they‘ve expanded to offering 77 Availability Zones within 25 regions globally. Along the way, AWS captured over 30% market share of cloud infrastructure services.
So in many ways, AWS pioneered—and still dominates—the market that DigitalOcean later joined as a simplified alternative.
Comparing DO and AWS Pricing Models
One major distinction between DO and AWS lies in their pricing model and how much transparency they offer on costs…
DigitalOcean Pricing
A few things stand out about DigitalOcean‘s pricing:
- Hourly billing – pay by the hour based on running infrastructure
- Predictable pricing – all infrastructure costs clearly listed
- $15/month for entry level use with 1GB RAM droplets
Most significantly, Network Transfer, SSD storage, and bandwidth are already accounted for in their upfront pricing.
For example, here is DigitalOcean‘s published pricing chart for Droplet plans:
With hourly billing and predictable rates, it‘s straightforward what you‘ll pay monthly based on your infrastructure usage.
AWS Pricing Wilderness
In contrast, Amazon Web Services pricing operates by a pay-as-you-go model with rates varying by:
- Compute instance type
- Storage and databases used
- Data transfer in/out
- API requests
- Load balancer hours
- Any add-on services
Many services follow tiered pricing with volume discounts too.
Simply put: the final tally depends on your unique combination of resources and workload. Some core components you may be paying for include:
- EC2 compute
- EBS block storage
- S3 object storage
- Data transfer
- Route 53 or CloudFront
- Relational Database Service
- etc…
To demonstrate how costs add up, suppose we wanted to run a simple workload with:
- 2 EC2 web server instances
- 500GB database storage
- Moderate traffic at 50GB outbound data
Simply adding up the minimum fees for those components would already total around $125/month!
And that‘s before paying for other essentials like DNS, a load balancer, monitoring tools, security services, etc.
The key takeaway? AWS can get very expensive, very fast depending on your infrastructure sizing and monthly usage. Be prepared to pay 2-4X+ more than an equivalent DigitalOcean deployment.
Capability Comparison: How DO and AWS Infrastructure Stacks Up
Stepping beyond pricing, how do actual infrastructure capabilities compare between the two providers?
Let‘s break down offerings across critical categories:
| Category | DigitalOcean | AWS |
|---|---|---|
| Compute | Droplets (preconfigured VMs) | EC2 (customize VMs) |
| Storage | Block Storage Volumes | EBS Volumes, S3 Buckets |
| Networking | VPCs, Firewalls | VPCs, Elastic Load Balancing |
| Databases | Managed DBs (MySQL, Redis) | RDS, DynamoDB |
| Security | Built-in firewall, SSH keys | IAM, Key Management Service |
| Monitoring | Basic metrics | CloudWatch, X-Ray |
| Global Infra | 13 regions | 25 regions, 77 zones |
Going category by category:
- Compute: AWS offers more flexibility to customize instances while DO provides presets optimized for different workloads. Both handle essentials like auto-scaling.
- Storage: AWS has specialized storage systems you won‘t find on DO. But basic SSD block storage needs are met by both platforms.
- Networking: Again AWS provides more advanced features. But DO delivers private networking, firewall rules, and load balancing to cover the basics.
- Databases: AWS databases like Aurora beat DigitalOcean‘s managed MySQL and Redis for features and performance at scale.
- Security: AWS has far more sophisticated security services, but DO still bakes in standard protections liked SSH key authentication.
- Monitoring: No contest here – AWS CloudWatch blows away DO‘s basic metrics for visibility into workloads.
- Global Infrastructure: AWS offers 5X as many regions which is vital for low-latency global delivery.
The verdict? If you want niche capabilities like machine learning, analytics, serverless functions or other complex services, only AWS fits the bill. For straightforward cloud hosting needs, DigitalOcean has you covered at lower cost.
Ease of Getting Started: DO vs AWS Dashboards
DigitalOcean has become synonymous with user-friendly infrastructure. So how usable are their dashboards compared to AWS?
Once signing up, you‘ll encounter DigitalOcean‘s clean, intuitive control panel:
With clearly labeled infrastructure components and configuration options, most developers can piece together a working architecture fairly intuitively.
In contrast, new AWS users face the massive machine that is the AWS Management Console:
Between the convoluted navigation and 200+ service icons, it‘s often joked that AWS "throws you into the deep end of the pool". Making sense of things takes rigorous self-training.
So if your team lacks cloud expertise, DigitalOcean allows moving to the cloud with far less friction. But skilled engineers ultimately have more flexibility on AWS.
Benchmarking Scalability
Scalability represents a major benefit of the cloud for handling spikes in traffic and usage. So how easily can infrastructure scale within each platform?
DigitalOcean facilitates programmatic scale-ups through their API and CLI to spin up additional droplets. So capacity can rapidly match demand spikes. However…
AWS offers auto-scaling groups taking things to another level automatically. Here you create templates that launch or terminate resources based on metrics like CPU usage without any manual intervention.
So whether serving up cat memes or mission-critical medical data, AWS ensures subsecond responsiveness to any flood of visitors. Though in simpler use cases, DigitalOcean also allows painless scaling.
Workload Ideal Use Cases: When to Pick AWS vs DO
Given differences in features and pricing, what scenarios are each platform best suited for?
DigitalOcean Shines For…
- Startups – developing and hosting web apps
- Agencies – managing client sites/projects
- SaaS Companies – delivering software-as-a-service
- Side Projects – launching apps, experimenting
- Small Teams – with limited cloud skills
Basically if you need capable yet simple managed hosting, you can‘t go wrong with DO.
AWS Excels At…
- Enterprise Workloads – at massive scale and complexity
- Data Analytics – for BI and visualizations
- Machine Learning – powering training and inference
- Global Applications – low-latency apps and microservices
- Specialized Needs – serverless, streaming, queues etc.
Given the expansive service catalog and high availability, AWS suits large orgs with advanced infrastructure demands.
And many do start on DO then pivot to AWS over time once stability, scale or new capabilities become priorities.
Key Takeaways: Choosing Between DO and AWS
When evaluating DigitalOcean vs AWS, keep these high-level differences in mind as you consider what aligns best to your use case:
- 💰 Costs – DigitalOcean is significantly cheaper, especially for basic workloads
- 🤹 Flexibility – AWS enables highly-customized and advanced infrastructure
- 🌎 Global reach – More regions on AWS for low-latency delivery everywhere
- 🚀 Scalability – Auto-scaling and huge capacity available on AWS
- 💻 Developer experience – DigitalOcean simplifies initial setup for lean teams
Balancing these factors based on your budget, workload needs and technical capabilities helps determine if DO or AWS is the better home for your cloud infrastructure today.
Many find best outcomes by leveraging both platforms with AWS handling more demanding applications and DO providing affordable hosting for non-critical services.
In closing, I hope mapping the DigitalOcean and AWS feature sets gives you perfect clarity in deciding between these titans of cloud hosting! If still unsure what choice supports your use case best, don‘t hesitate to drop me a note in the comments.
