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DigitalOcean vs VMware Cloud Foundation 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
Users generally found DigitalOcean cost-effective, noticing initial savings, though some lacked details to quantify exact financial impact.
Sentiment score
5.7
Users expect full ROI from VMware Cloud Foundation within two years, benefiting from 30-40% savings in time and stability.
VMware Cloud Foundation allows cost and time savings by quickly deploying infrastructure requests and integrating automatic ticketing and backup services.
In terms of ROI, although VMware Cloud Foundation is expensive, it saves time in most cases, which indirectly saves costs for users.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
DigitalOcean's customer service is responsive yet inconsistent, needing improved technical support and quicker resolutions compared to AWS.
Sentiment score
6.9
VMware Cloud Foundation support receives mixed reviews, with praise for responsiveness but suggestions for improved speed, expertise, and qualifications.
DigitalOcean support is rated lower than AWS's because we encounter issues more frequently.
There are times when support is unclear, and even VMware support personnel may lack familiarity with certain parts, causing difficulties.
The technical support from VMware is very good.
Our technical support team is capable of providing support on the operating system side.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
DigitalOcean is highly rated for scalability, offering tools to manage increased loads and easily add resources like RAM or CPUs.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware Cloud Foundation scales well for diverse organizations but may face performance issues due to hardware and licensing constraints.
I have not tried vertical scaling yet, but from the documentation, it seems very easy to scale the system.
When more hosts are added, performance goes slow.
VMware Cloud Foundation supports scalability and company growth.
In terms of scalability, I also rate VMware Cloud Foundation as an eight out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
DigitalOcean offers reliable stability, though some users note occasional downtimes and performance fluctuations based on extended use.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware Cloud Foundation offers high stability with minimal glitches; it requires expertise for complex deployments and migration challenges.
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.
The stability of VMware Cloud Foundation is very high.
If one component fails to operate in a timely manner, the entire infrastructure can go down because everything is interconnected.
 

Room For Improvement

DigitalOcean struggles with performance, customer dissatisfaction, and service issues, prompting calls for improved features and better support.
VMware Cloud Foundation needs improved integration, enhanced features, better support, simplified deployment, competitive pricing, and improved user experience.
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 lack of a proper service provider model ultimately led us to cease operations with DigitalOcean.
There are issues where even with 8 GB RAM, the performance doesn't meet expectations.
Each user needs deep knowledge of every aspect of virtualization.
VMware Broadcom needs to include auto resource allocation at the VM levels.
VMware Cloud Foundation is complex, and there are always updates regarding security features, accessibility, and the user interface.
 

Setup Cost

DigitalOcean's pricing ranges from $5 to $50 monthly, with costs depending on configuration and perceived as competitive by some.
VMware Cloud Foundation is costly but valued for its comprehensive features and reliability, despite recent price increases with core-based pricing.
DigitalOcean offers affordable pricing, especially for startups.
The cost has become very high, especially after Broadcom's acquisition, altering the licensing model to a more expensive core-based system.
The price is quite higher than some other vendors.
VMware Cloud Foundation is quite expensive when compared to its competitors, but it does save time, which in turn saves money.
 

Valuable Features

DigitalOcean provides reliable, cost-effective servers with an intuitive interface, database management, flexible hosting, and easy installation.
VMware Cloud Foundation provides automated, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure management with seamless public cloud integration for enhanced deployment and monitoring.
Some customers had compliance issues with Microsoft that did not exist in DigitalOcean, which provided more flexibility to use the solution.
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.
VMware Cloud Foundation is its ability to manage everything from a single console, including network, virtualization, and storage management.
It includes virtualization hardware as compute using vSphere, storage virtualization, network virtualization, and automation all combined in a single solution.
VMware Cloud Foundation allows for extensive customization, aligning with our customer requirements.
 

Categories and Ranking

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
VMware Cloud Foundation
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (3rd)
 

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 VMware Cloud Foundation is 1.3%, up from 0.6% 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.
Mangesh  Parjane - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience has improved centralized management through single console operations
There is room for improvement in how section updates are handled. The challenge lies in the difficulty of pinpointing issues when something goes wrong at a single stage. Also, each user needs deep knowledge of every aspect of virtualization, and the VMware personnel might not fully grasp aspects outside their expertise, requiring the involvement of other professionals.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

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?
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...
What do you like most about VMware Cloud Foundation?
VMware Cloud Foundation provides us with the vSphere dashboard through which we can manage, monitor, schedule, and spin up your virtual machines. We can manage, monitor, and get reports of your inf...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Foundation?
I'm not involved in sales, so I have no specific information about pricing. However, I've heard it's not a cheap product, but the cost includes very good support.
What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Foundation?
VMware Cloud Foundation is complex, and there are always updates regarding security features, accessibility, and the user interface. Making changes isn't simple because there are a lot of tables to...
 

Also Known As

Digital Ocean
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
ricoh, dell technologies, sky
Find out what your peers are saying about DigitalOcean vs. VMware Cloud Foundation and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.