Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon AWS 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

Amazon AWS
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
255
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (2nd)
DigitalOcean
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.0%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.3%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Arun Srivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for automatic scaling of resources and provides built-in firewalls and security features, eliminating the need for external security solutions
One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots. You're speaking to chatbots, and that can sometimes be frustrating because there's no person on the other side. AI is not a substitute for a person. AWS marketplace is very strong, but somehow AWS doesn't promote it much. They have a huge customer base across the globe, and if products were launched in their marketplace, they could sell like hotcakes. They should improve their marketplace and promote the same product across the globe. They can take a cut, but they should promote it. That's something they don't do very much. So, AWS should promote its marketplace software. The company should promote it aggressively. Currently, they keep it very subtle. If you ask for it, they'll help you out. But they don't seem to advertise, "You're building a product on our platform? Why don't you sell it in our marketplace?" Improvement in AI: AWS is a little behind Microsoft Azure in terms of AI. AWS is still getting there, but the kind of examples and help files available in Azure for AI are much better. So AWS still needs to work on its AI functionality.
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

"I like that it helps us do everything really fast, and its advanced services."
"The storage on offer is excellent."
"It streamlines tasks like table creation and data loading into Redshift, making the process more efficient and manageable."
"Amazon AWS has a good Redshift database."
"They are enterprising and pretty good in terms of features. It has good security. Its availability is also pretty good. It is available everywhere in the world. It has pretty good integrations, and it is working well. They have done a lot of improvements, and its UI has improved a lot."
"It has many choices of computer options, storage options, and even database options."
"The compute and the elasticness of the compute is really great. Whenever there's a load, it automatically adds the servers and then reduces the servers based on the configuration. This is really wonderful, more cost-effective, and it's been really good for us."
"One of the most valuable things about it, besides the stability, is that you can forget about infrastructure because you're just doing it on AWS. I remember the times before AWS and other cloud solutions existed, and it was a huge pain to get real hardware, put it inside, configure everything, report everything, and do a scale. It was very, very difficult compared to how it is now. Not even just AWS, but what all these cloud providers are doing, I would say, is a huge advancement in technology."
"The solution is very stable."
"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."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"DigitalOcean is much cheaper compared to Oracle, Amazon, and Google, making it a better option for a startup."
"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."
"The most outstanding aspect of DigitalOcean is its user interface and ease of use. Compared to more complex solutions, such as AWS, DigitalOcean's platform is highly intuitive and user-friendly."
"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."
 

Cons

"Some services which were easy to use through shortcuts are now more complicated to use."
"Not all of the functionality is available in Europe and our customers in France want to be able to use features that are only available in the US."
"Its price should be lower. The price for in-house usage should be different from production usage."
"We like everything about the solution except for the general price."
"I think the price can be improved."
"There should be improvement in terms of creating databases of varying sizes which would provide flexibility."
"The pricing of AWS is very unclear. They make it quite confusing."
"The interface is relatively complex."
"The technical support for this solution could be improved."
"DigitalOcean could offer a pay-as-you-go model similar to AWS, where I would pay for what I use rather than having fixed payments."
"DigitalOcean could offer a pay-as-you-go model similar to AWS, where I would pay for what I use rather than having fixed payments."
"We found the solution to be a bit expensive."
"The issue with DigitalOcean is primarily the latency. So, when you have a mixed system with some components staying here, and then we encounter network latency, it's not optimal. Our"
"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."
"I think something needs to be done in terms of technical support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the Virtual Desktop service from Amazon AWS could improve, it is more expensive than competitors. The pricing model we are using is pay-as-you-go. You only pay for what you use."
"The solution is on a subscription-based model, and it is pay-as-you-go. The price could be cheaper."
"The tool’s pricing is reasonable."
"It's not very pricey, but it could be cheaper."
"The price tends to be higher, but that is a usual case when prioritizing reliable backup solutions for servers and other infrastructure."
"For the initial 12 months, the solution is reasonably priced. On enterprise license contracts where you negotiate, have been reasonable too."
"I find Amazon AWS very expensive compare to Microsoft Azure."
"The licensing cost varies with the project involved."
"The solution provides the cheapest cloud in comparison to the other cloud solutions."
"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 would rate DigitalOcean's pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"The program is cheaper than others."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing is cheap."
"I am using the cheapest option available, which costs $50 per month."
"The pricing is moderate and reasonable for a mid-tier cloud platform."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
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?
DigitalOcean could offer a pay-as-you-go model similar to AWS, where I would pay for what I use rather than having fixed payments. It would be beneficial to have more flexibility without fixed paym...
What is your primary use case for DigitalOcean?
I primarily use DigitalOcean to deploy applications. I rent the system from them, where I deploy my web servers and application servers. I use it to host my applications since moving from Oracle. I...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
Digital Ocean
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. DigitalOcean and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.