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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Google Firebase
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.1%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 6.7%, up 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support services are good."
"The solution is very stable."
"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 user interface is nice, and it is very easy to use. Anyone can use it."
"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 performs very well in this context. All the assets go on DigitalOcean."
"The droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well."
"DigitalOcean is much cheaper compared to Oracle, Amazon, and Google, making it a better option for a startup."
"I like Kubernetes integration."
"If I were to make a chatting application I would use this product because it is easy to learn and implement."
"The scalability is good."
"Its initial setup process is easy."
"It is a completely reliable product."
"If there's data added to the solution, there's a good record of it so it's easy to track everything."
"The product is easy to use."
"The main part that I like about Firebase is that it provides command line tools."
"The connection between Firebase and the integrated development environments, especially when using Android Studio, is crucial as it saves time."
 

Cons

"The platform could enhance its features, particularly for ETL processes. Additionally, more integration features would be highly beneficial."
"I would like to see an automation feature added to send emails out using the open-source solution."
"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 technical support for this solution could be improved."
"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."
"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 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"
"There's always room for improvement in every product, and the major improvement that's needed in Google Firebase is its simplification, particularly for unsavvy users or non-technical users. If you're not tech-savvy, it would be very difficult for you to use the functions of the solution and understand its security rules. If you want even non-technical people to find it easy to use Google Firebase, it should be simplified because the difference between screen-derived management and code-derived management isn't complex, so simplification wouldn't be an issue."
"Firebase's real-time information isn't technically real-time. It takes a while to upload user activity into the app. It's not as fast as Datadog, the other solution we use."
"There was no way of knowing how the rise in traffic would impact the price."
"They could add a session replay to better understand how a crash or bug happened."
"The notifications must be made a little bit better."
"Google Firebase should add extra functionality to do global delete and updates across your database."
"As we are a small team, we have only utilized some features, however, all those features have been very useful, and there is no problem."
"The solution's notification system could be much better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no licensing fee but there is a subscription cost based on how much RAM and storage you require."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"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."
"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."
"This is a pay as you go solution. There is no license and it is usage based."
"The solution provides the cheapest cloud in comparison to the other cloud solutions."
"The pricing is cheap."
"The pricing plans indicate it can get very expensive."
"The price of Google Firebase is very good."
"The price is perfect and very clearly defined. The price during the trial setup is free and then you move to a paid service."
"The more the number of reads and writes, the more one gets charged."
"We are using the free version of Google Firebase."
"The monthly cost is based on writing data and queries to the database."
"My company makes monthly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing costs attached to the solution."
"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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
10%
 

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: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.