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Amazon AWS vs DigitalOcean vs Google Firebase comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

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. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 6.0%, down from 6.7% 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.
Shravan Revanna - PeerSpot reviewer
Simple to get started with and offers integration features in multiple programming languages
The product provides integration features in multiple languages, such as Python, JavaScript, Golang, and all other languages. Google Firebase has documentation, which might seem a bit confusing, but one with decent knowledge can easily explore and get started with Firebase quickly. Before jumping into any cloud infrastructure, the tool should analyze how much it would cost to run the database. Google Firebase provides a certain number of reads and writes per day, which is approximately 40,000 reads and writes. If there are more than 200 to 300 active users per day, there will be plenty of reads and writes to the database. In such a case, one can't use Google Firebase and has to upgrade to Spark, which is where it is based on usage. The tool is fairly simple to get started with. Utilize all the features can get very complicated. One must be a pretty good developer who has a lot of experience to be able to utilize the best features. It gets really complicated over time. The basic functionality and basic usage are easy to use and easy to get started. There are plenty of deprecated versions, and frequently upgrading them causes inconvenience. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability is magnificent, it's spectacular."
"The performance of AWS is excellent."
"It's quite stable and scalable. The price is good as well."
"The product's scalability is good."
"Technical support is quite helpful."
"The pricing model is good. It's pay-as-you-go."
"Easy to access and secure, two important features."
"It's easy to manage. We can use a wide range of technologies with AWS."
"The user interface is nice, and it is very easy to use. Anyone can use it."
"The solution is very stable."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can create a phishing server and use it."
"DigitalOcean is much cheaper compared to Oracle, Amazon, and Google, making it a better option for a startup."
"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."
"This solution supports our real time database. We also use it for AB testing and for its Google Cloud functions. We make use of Crashlytics and reporting on details."
"The main part that I like about Firebase is that it provides command line tools."
"Google Firebase is one I like a lot because it gives us a little bit more power and accessibility when it comes to publishing apps a lot quicker and for the needs that we have."
"Its simplicity makes it quite handy for my needs in app development."
"The user interface is very good and easy to navigate."
"I would recommend Google Firebase for its cost-effectiveness, availability, and ease of deployment."
"The solution is useful for managing users and user authentication."
"The most valuable features of Google Firebase are its database, noSQL database, file storage, authentication, and notifications."
 

Cons

"Price is an area with a shortcoming in the solution that has a scope for improvement"
"In terms of technical features, I don't see anything missing. The only two points in favor of other providers are the price and local support. The main problem that we see here in Brazil is the price. It is much more expensive than any other cloud provider. Their local support can also be better. We get more support from some of the other providers here in Brazil as compared to AWS."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of hybrid Kubernetes management."
"There are some limitations for certain applications that happen regionally and it is an issue for us."
"Some of their well-listed services are not super configurable."
"The customization could improve. However, it depends on the customization needed."
"There was some new learning in terms of IOPS on the EBS storage. The concept of burstable IOPS was new and we did have a few outages when we ran out of IOPS."
"The sorting model in AWS is a little bit complicated. When you are going through any component, you can get some surprising results."
"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"
"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."
"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."
"The technical support for this solution could be improved."
"I think something needs to be done in terms of technical support."
"I would like to see improvements to the logging and user interface. The verification process could be more streamlined."
"The solution could improve by having integration with GitHub."
"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 only thing that I won't do on Firebase is the hosting side of things for a progressive web app because it feels like you actually still need to download the app first before you can actually get into the functionality of the app."
"I would like to see faster data migration and some support for other languages in the next release."
"We had some compatibility issues with Elixir."
"The solution could improve by providing an improved SDK tool and automatic indexing for databases."
"The cold start-up of the cloud function needs to speed up. For me personally, I'm not experienced in anything there, however, I've just read online it's a problem."
"The product is complicated for beginners to understand."
"Their technical support needs to be enhanced with more support for customers."
"The product is not that cheap."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When it comes to professional certification in AWS, I implore others to study hard before your exams because $300 is a painful waste of money if you fail."
"It's not very pricey, but it could be cheaper."
"The cost is on a monthly basis."
"The pricing of AWS was attractive for us, so that's something that's okay at least for this transaction-based system. However, we still have some concerns about more data-driven applications or those that involve a lot of heavy uploading and downloading. So our whole data warehouse is still something that would not go into the cloud because of the pricing model."
"With Amazon AWS, you pay as you go."
"The solution is on a pay-as-use pricing model. The price of the solution could always be better but it is priced competitively."
"Amazon AWS has pay-as-you-go options available."
"The pricing is expensive."
"I am using the cheapest option available, which costs $50 per month."
"The pricing is cheap."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing is moderate and reasonable for a mid-tier cloud platform."
"This is a pay as you go solution. There is no license and it is usage based."
"The program is cheaper than others."
"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."
"We are using the free version of Google Firebase."
"Google Firebase’s pricing needs improvement."
"The solution's price is based on the number of consumers."
"I rate Google Firebase a seven or eight out of ten for pricing."
"It is not easy to calculate the cost per copy, use or if the load rose dramatically we did not know how that would impact the final price."
"The pricing component is a bit confusing when it comes to what exactly you'll pay for, but I wouldn't say it's expensive."
"The price is perfect and very clearly defined. The price during the trial setup is free and then you move to a paid service."
"They have a free tier that will cover most projects. For more intensive use, you pay as you use it, but the price is very cheap."
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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%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
10%
Educational Organization
9%
 

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 wonderfu...
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 expand...
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 fle...
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 stati...
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 fi...
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 a...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. ...
What do you like most about Google Firebase?
Google Analytics for Firebase is the best feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Firebase?
Google Cloud is the cheapest among the solutions I have used. Their free tier is very generous, allowing me to run si...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
Digital Ocean
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: March 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.