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DigitalOcean vs Google Firebase 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.1
Most users saved significantly in the first month using DigitalOcean, although some didn't notice financial gains.
Sentiment score
7.5
Users find Google Firebase cost-effective with valuable features, though they sometimes choose cheaper alternatives for specific services.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
DigitalOcean's customer service is responsive, but users seek improved 24/7 technical support, with no phone contact available.
Sentiment score
7.0
Google Firebase's clear documentation aids troubleshooting, with mixed feedback on direct support and users often relying on community forums.
DigitalOcean support is rated lower than AWS's because we encounter issues more frequently.
I do not currently find any other competitors that match its offering.
If the community doesn't have the answers, then I contact the Google Firebase team directly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
DigitalOcean enables scalable infrastructure, easily managing increased demands with tools and load balancers, supported by comprehensive documentation.
Sentiment score
6.9
Google Firebase is scalable with ease of integration but faces cost, performance, and configurability challenges for some users.
I have not tried vertical scaling yet, but from the documentation, it seems very easy to scale the system.
It can handle all tiers of the market effectively.
I would rate the scalability of Google Firebase as eight because I miss some features from MS SQL, particularly the SQL functions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
DigitalOcean is largely stable and reliable, with occasional downtime, but mostly meets user expectations for uninterrupted performance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Google Firebase is praised for its stability, reliability, and transparency, though some seek improved process management.
DigitalOcean is quite stable, and I would rate its stability at nine out of ten.
It is approximately 50 to 60% stable, reaching 60 to 70% depending on usage levels.
 

Room For Improvement

DigitalOcean struggles with reliability, security, and performance, needing better flexibility, monitoring, and user experience for improved functionality.
Firebase needs improvements in control, pricing, support, speed, querying, customization, language support, UI, and integration capabilities.
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.
There are issues where even with 8 GB RAM, the performance doesn't meet expectations.
Since Google Firebase is a NoSQL platform, areas for improvement include enhancing query functionalities to be more equivalent to SQL, like MS SQL.
Automation testing with mobile devices could be improved, especially in regression testing to ensure that new feature launches do not affect other features.
 

Setup Cost

DigitalOcean provides flexible enterprise pricing, starting at $5/month, valued for scalability despite some users finding it slightly costly.
Google Firebase offers a generous free tier and flexible pay-as-you-go model, though international costs can add up.
DigitalOcean offers affordable pricing, especially for startups.
Google Firebase offers a reasonable pricing structure.
 

Valuable Features

DigitalOcean offers user-friendly, reliable cloud servers with cost-effective features like droplets, managed databases, and easy scaling integration.
Google Firebase offers real-time database, seamless integration, powerful analytics, scalability, and robust features for efficient app development and hosting.
The most significant aspect is that we can connect directly to the system from anywhere.
The droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well.
These features are invaluable for mobile development and ensuring smooth internal operations.
What I appreciate most about Google Firebase is the speed, accuracy, and security it offers.
 

Categories and Ranking

DigitalOcean
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Firebase
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.4%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 5.5%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
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 Google Firebase?
Google Analytics for Firebase is the best feature of the solution.
 

Also Known As

Digital Ocean
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about DigitalOcean vs. Google Firebase and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.