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)
13th
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 March 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 14.7%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.2%, down from 2.4% 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

"Amazon AWS is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are the high level of capabilities, cloud-native environment, developer-friendly, intuitive interface, and automation. The solution overall is easy to learn from the resources available."
"The experience with Amazon AWS is error-free. That was also, of course, something that I really appreciate. That means it's really well-tested and, as published or as declared."
"The interface of the solution is good."
"This solution is used as the basic requirement for any virtual machines use cases, the storage is used for each use case."
"We can spin up the server anytime and have root access to it."
"One of the most valuable features is that Amazon AWS has a lot of data centers and regions where we can position our virtual machines for leverage. Amazon AWS is also easy to use. You can quickly spin up something, use Explorer, building proofs of concept, things like that. Once the proof of concept is built once and we know how things are going to look from a production perspective, we try to move everything to the data centers. These features and the ease of use are the main reasons why we use AWS."
"Amazon AWS is user-friendly and intuitive."
"The customer support team are very responsive."
"The solution is very stable."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"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."
"I like Kubernetes integration."
"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 droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well."
 

Cons

"AWS could be more scalable."
"The pricing is reasonable but there is always room to be better."
"The problem with AWS is you have to keep up with the technology. If you don't stay up to date with the technology and its latest changes then you won't know what to use in your infrastructure."
"It should be more secure and have more integrations."
"Amazon AWS should integrate AI capabilities."
"An easier way to determine estimated costs quickly would be helpful."
"We have had several issues with the products and services but as of now, there are no good alternatives."
"The solution could always be further improved on the commercial side of things. Amazon Web Services are not cheap. It would be ideal if it was less expensive for the customer."
"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 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"
"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 platform could enhance its features, particularly for ETL processes. Additionally, more integration features would be highly beneficial."
"I would like to see improvements to the logging and user interface. The verification process could be more streamlined."
"I think something needs to be done in terms of technical support."
"The solution could improve by having integration with GitHub."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is on a monthly basis."
"Licensing fees depend on the contract. It can be monthly or on-demand resources."
"The solution is expensive compared to other providers because you need many of the services and it can add up fast."
"Be careful with your consumption, especially when you are testing things. Costs can creep up on you relatively fast, without even noticing."
"From a cost perspective, Amazon AWS is excellent. You need to pay for a license to use AWS, and the license could be cheaper, but in each of the cases and instances I've used AWS, there has been a good chance to save money."
"The price tends to be higher, but that is a usual case when prioritizing reliable backup solutions for servers and other infrastructure."
"Its price is kind of okay. When we do a migration from on-premises to the cloud, we typically use the lift-and-shift model. Based on the studies that we have done, cost savings are definitely there when we moved from on-premises to the cloud."
"When you compare Amazon AWS to Microsoft Azure, the pricing of both is almost the same. There are some instances when one is cheaper than the other in one area but it is difficult to pinpoint which one is cheaper because it depends upon a lot of factors, such as the use case. However, the overall price of both solutions could be reduced."
"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."
"The solution provides the cheapest cloud in comparison to the other cloud solutions."
"I would rate DigitalOcean's pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"The pricing is moderate and reasonable for a mid-tier cloud platform."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"There is no licensing fee but there is a subscription cost based on how much RAM and storage you require."
"The pricing is cheap."
"I am using the cheapest option available, which costs $50 per month."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
842,161 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
28%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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: March 2025.
842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.