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Alibaba Cloud vs DigitalOcean comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DigitalOcean
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 11.9%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.1%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alibaba Cloud11.9%
DigitalOcean2.1%
Other86.0%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Michael Olayemi - PeerSpot reviewer
Enjoy cost-effective hosting with flexible deployment and room for payment model improvement
I use only one feature, which is the droplet, and it has been satisfactory. The droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well. I also have total freedom over what I use, and I have a better user interface and documentation compared to Oracle.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"It is easy to set up."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can create a phishing server and use it."
"The customer support team are very responsive."
"The droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well."
"The technical support services are good."
"It's been a good choice for us for some services. We generally have several deployments. For instance, for some static Angular applications, it was a clear choice to run them on Cloudflare, which performs very well in this context. All the assets go on DigitalOcean."
"The solution is very stable."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"The solution's app platform simplifies many tasks a developer must handle manually. For instance, when serving a website, the app platform uses NGINX to manage the app's serving, caching, and automatic rerunning in case of failure."
 

Cons

"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."
"The user experience must be improved."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"I would like to see improvements to the logging and user interface. The verification process could be more streamlined."
"Other solutions are proving the monitoring feature, like AWS having GuardDuty and SAP having services for logs and monitoring. DigitalOcean doesn’t have any other benefits."
"The technical support for this solution could be improved."
"I think something needs to be done in terms of technical support."
"The lack of a proper service provider model ultimately led us to cease operations with DigitalOcean."
"The deployment time can be improved in DigitalOcean. While deployment is automated, the process can take a minute and a half to five minutes, and for more complex applications, this time increases even further. This is not optimal for applications that receive frequent updates."
"The solution could improve by having integration with GitHub."
"I would like to see an automation feature added to send emails out using the open-source solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The product is not that expensive."
"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"I would rate DigitalOcean's pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"This is a pay as you go solution. There is no license and it is usage based."
"The pricing is moderate and reasonable for a mid-tier cloud platform."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing is cheap."
"There is no licensing fee but there is a subscription cost based on how much RAM and storage you require."
"The price of DigitalOcean could be lower. It is expensive. it's higher than other solutions available in the market. We pay approximately $20 to $25 a month to use the solution. The price we pay is for the shared CPU option."
"I am using the cheapest option available, which costs $50 per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
What do you like most about DigitalOcean?
It's been a good choice for us for some services. We generally have several deployments. For instance, for some static Angular applications, it was a clear choice to run them on Cloudflare, which p...
What needs improvement with DigitalOcean?
There are disadvantages, such as machines getting stuck or disconnected, requiring restarts. Sometimes we lose connection and need to check with the IT service provider from the DigitalOcean servic...
What is your primary use case for DigitalOcean?
We use DigitalOcean mostly for RDS services and cloud-related systems where we want to deploy codes and run them using nginx or other services where it is cheaper to use, and we use it to extract d...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Digital Ocean
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. DigitalOcean and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.