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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
5.1
Transitioning to VMware Cloud Foundation offers 30-40% savings through reduced tickets and improved stability, despite limited immediate ROI.
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
7.0
VMware Cloud Foundation's support is responsive and expert, though improvements in speed and product familiarity are desired.
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.
Based on my nine years of experience with VMware, I would evaluate their technical support as effective.
Support was reliable and responsive before the acquisition by Broadcom.
 

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 is versatile and scalable, highly rated but dependent on licensing and hardware for optimal performance.
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.
VMware Cloud Foundation is quite scalable, receiving a rating of eight and a half to nine 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
7.7
Users rate VMware Cloud Foundation highly for stability, noting minor migration challenges but appreciate its reliable performance and regular updates.
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.
I am currently satisfied with the stability of VMware Cloud Foundation, though having started only two to three months ago, I am still in the monitoring phase.
 

Room For Improvement

DigitalOcean struggles with performance, customer dissatisfaction, and service issues, prompting calls for improved features and better support.
VMware Cloud Foundation faces pricing, licensing complexities, integration challenges, and high costs, needing enhancements in customization and support services.
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.
VMware Broadcom needs to include auto resource allocation at the VM levels.
The maintenance cost has increased significantly, especially after Broadcom acquired VMware, with a shift from socket-based licensing to core-based licensing.
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 pricing is seen as high but is justified by reliability and features, impacting affordability variably.
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 excels in automation, scalability, and user-friendly management, enhancing efficiency with seamless integration and advanced features.
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.
With VMware Cloud Foundation, auto-deployment is possible by simply right-clicking and assigning a specific DHCP IP, enabling physical to vCenter level communication for automatic VM deployment.
VMware Cloud Foundation is its ability to manage everything from a single console, including network, virtualization, and storage management.
All features of VMware Cloud Foundation are valuable to us, as it covers every industry standard protocol and requirement protocol.
 

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
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Foundation is 1.3%, up from 0.7% 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.
Narasimha Reddy Illuri - PeerSpot reviewer
There is progress in performance and stability, but further advancements are needed for end-user satisfaction
VMware Cloud Foundation's best features include its advanced capabilities, security purposes, and performance levels. The solution offers efficient licensing options. Previously, vSphere essential was available, but now it has moved to VMware Cloud Foundation 8.0. It includes advanced features such as lifecycle manager, patching level, and cluster level patching options. The solution now offers auto-deployment of VMs. Previously, I had to use the content library, right-click, and create VMs manually. With VMware Cloud Foundation, auto-deployment is possible by simply right-clicking and assigning a specific DHCP IP, enabling physical to vCenter level communication for automatic VM deployment. The workload portability feature in VMware Cloud Foundation provides good workload balance. For instance, in a cluster level with four to five ESXi hosts, each host has minimum resources allocated for CPU and memory, resulting in significantly reduced utilization at the VMware Cloud Foundation level.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
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?
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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.