DigitalOcean's primary focus for its cloud service is developers, but it provides a globally available, high-performance public cloud service for anyone who wants to use it.
DigitalOcean (whose final cost can be determined by contacting the company) is notable for several things.
The first thing is simplicity in both design and pricing.
The second is its clean design at all levels.
DigitalOcean is also easy to use and understand, and it performs very well.
That said, it still doesn't beat Amazon Web Services (AWS), our Editors' Choice in our Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) review roundup.
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The DigitalOcean cloud offers a selection of Linux and Unix servers spread across 12 data centers.
With those servers, you get a range of configuration options ranging from one to 32 virtual CPUs, solid-state drive (SSD)-based storage, and a collection of services—most of which are included at no additional charge.
There is an extra charge for load balancers, which cost $20 per month.
DigitalOcean approaches cloud services a little differently when compared with bigger-name vendors, like AWS or Google Cloud Platform (Visit Site at Google Cloud) .
First, it calls its cloud servers "Droplets" in keeping with the ocean theme.
Droplets will run one of four Linux distributions: CentOS, Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu.
You can also run FreeBSD, which is a Unix-like operating system (OS).
DigitalOcean does not support Microsoft Windows.
While DigitalOcean Droplets don't normally include any sort of graphical user interface (GUI), they are available and can be installed if your application requires it.
However, the default with the Droplets is a command line, which you normally access by using a Secure Shell (SSH) terminal session.
Setup and Configuration
This is where the clean design and simplicity of the DigitalOcean Droplet really shines.
All there is to creating a virtual server is to log on and choose what operating system you wish to use.
Then you scroll down and choose a size from a list that includes the number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and a memory size.
You can start with 1 gigabyte (GB) of memory and 1 vCPU, which includes 25 GB of SSD storge and 1 terabyte (TB) of transfer.
All of that costs $5 per month.
The choices are presented in a simple list.
Each item specifies the configuration and the price.
You pick one.
It's that simple.
You continue to scroll, and you can add backups, block storage in a range of sizes, and whether you want the storage formatted and mounted automatically.
Then you choose your data center region (I chose New York), and some services such as monitoring and IPv6.
After that, you can add an SSH key and choose how may Droplets you want in the configuration you created.
Then you name your server.
When that's done, you click "Create" and that's it.
The only part of your activity that requires anything beyond a mouse click is when you choose a name for your virtual server, and that's only if you don't want to use the default.
The whole process takes less than five minutes.
I created Droplets that were running 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04.4 instances, but you have a choice of several versions of each of the available operating systems.
Like everything else, you select them from a drop-down box.
You can also choose to add apps from a list (another mouse click) that includes WordPress , MySQL, Docker, or Ruby on Rails (RoR), along with several others.
And you can choose to create containers along with your Droplet.
While you certainly need to know how to use FreeBSD or Linux for these Droplets to be useful, there's no additional knowledge required.
That might make it slightly less flexible to use than, say, IBM Cloud ($9,100.00 at IBM) if you're building a highly advanced data center in the cloud, but it also makes DigitalOcean a lot easier to use for the average small to midsized business (SMB).
You don't need to be an expert systems administrator, and whatever you do need to know can be found in the online documentation.
One feature that DigitalOcean has that I found particularly nice is a What's New section in their docs.
Every time DigitalOcean adds a feature, makes a change, or recently removes a Linux distribution that's no longer supported, there's an entry that lets you know and explains what the cloud service did.
It's refreshing because it's so easy to find.
Performance
While the folks at DigitalOcean were certain that they would win our performance tests, considering that their test was run using Linux without a GUI and the others were run using Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (or Server 2012 in one case), the fact is, they didn't win.
GeekBench 4 from Primate Labs is a cross-platform benchmarking app designed to treat all platforms the same, regardless of the operating system.
DigitalOcean's average benchmark numbers using Geekbench 4 was 2,834 for the single core test and 2,717 for the multi-core test.
I ran the test using the basic single vCPU with a default of 1 GB of memory, just like I did with the other tests.
As such, they are indistinguishable from most of the other cloud servers.
The only exception was the test with Rackspace, and that was because its minimum is two vCPUs.
But when you compare that performance—which is on par with the big cloud vendors—against the price, DigitalOcean is a real bargain.
Pricing
The easy way to think about DigitalOcean's pricing is that each Droplet will cost $5 per month per CPU.
There are complexities when it comes to things such as apps and load balancers.
But for basic compute services, DigitalOcean is pretty straightforward.
It's made easier because some of the basic services you pay extra for elsewhere, like firewalls, are included in the price.
Backups are 20 percent of the CPU price; load balancers cost $20 per month.
This is all broken down per hour so that, if you don't use a full month of a service, you don't pay for a full month.
You'll see in the pricing structure when you choose a service that there's also an hourly amount associated with it, so the $5-per-month charge is also $0.007 per hour.
What's missing is the incredibly complex, essentially inscrutable pricing structure of cloud services such as AWS, where just figuring the price requires hiring a consultant.
Of course, AWS has a lot more options, which is why the pricing is more complex.
But if what you need is basic compute services, then DigitalOcean removes the mystery.
Here, at least, your monthly cloud bill won't be a surprise.
The standard multi-tier web server app that we use for comparison is made up of four on-demand Linux instances: the web server, the load balancer, and two peak web servers.
The hosting web and disaster-recovery (DR) servers resided on a pair of 1GB Performance Server Linux instances.
These were supported by two on-demand, extra-small web server instances to meet peak demand and a small, on-demand DR server.
For database storage, there's a 300GB block storage instance and 4 GB for the hosting site.
The 150GB Database Management System (DBMS) worked off a 4GB cloud database running MySQL with backups.
The total monthly data transfer allowance, source to destination, was the standard 1 TB.
We priced this out at $60 per month or an annual cost of $1,200.
DigitalOcean provides a service-level agreement (SLA) of 99.99 percent, and the company says it will credit any time you've lost because of downtime.
Support is included in the package.
If your needs are more complex and your monthy payment higher, then there's more advanced support included.
Using DigitalOcean and its Droplets is like a breath of fresh air.
Your cloud services are easy, setup is easy, and management is easy.
You're not encumbered by complexity, and if all you really need is computing in the cloud, DigitalOcean provides just that.
You don't need special training to set it up and use it, although you do need to know your OS.
And the price is more than just reasonable: It's cheap.
There are things missing from DigitalOcean's cloud that some may consider essential.
Although DigitalOcean provides solid support for developers, it notably lacks support for Microsoft Windows Server or other Microsoft products.
In addition, the choices for other software and apps are limited.
But that's part of why it's so easy to use those Droplets, and why it seems so clean and simple.
And there's a lot to be said for simplicity.
The Bottom Line
DigitalOcean provides an inexpensive and easy-to-use cloud service that provides basic services in a well-designed environment.
