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DigitalOcean vs Microsoft Azure 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)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
313
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 19.1%, up from 18.4% 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.
Nicolas Chabrier - PeerSpot reviewer
Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration
The only thing is regarding the management of multi-cloud environments. That's not really possible. So basically, it's wonderful if you manage Microsoft clearly and if you manage Microsoft Azure, but if you need to consume external services and have a global overview of all your consumption, it's not the case. Google, for instance, has tools that help you manage multiple environments, which makes sense because Google is really the cloud provider. So that's why they need to be compliant with the others. But for sure, Microsoft's approach is different, and it's wonderful when you're one hundred percent on Azure. But if you'd like to have something more of a multi-cloud strategy, that's a bit of a gap where they could improve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"DigitalOcean is much cheaper compared to Oracle, Amazon, and Google, making it a better option for a startup."
"The solution is very stable."
"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."
"The customer support team are very responsive."
"I like Kubernetes integration."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can create a phishing server and use it."
"The technical support services are good."
"It's a cloud-based application, so installation is straightforward and doesn't take much time."
"The product is highly stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the integration between all of the components in Azure."
"I know there have been a lot of improvements and a lot of new services lately. I'm really not aware of all of them."
"It is a reliable solution that is easy to set up."
"The solution does a lot of coding and customization, and can go live quickly."
"It enhance the application's performance by managing increased demand efficiently"
"Azure has the best website amongst all cloud computing platforms. It is simple to utilize, and one can release nearly anything, from app services to host sites."
 

Cons

"We found the solution to be a bit expensive."
"I would like to see improvements to the logging and user interface. The verification process could be more streamlined."
"Other solutions are proving the monitoring feature, like AWS having GuardDuty and SAP having services for logs and monitoring. DigitalOcean doesn’t have any other benefits."
"I would like to see an automation feature added to send emails out using the open-source solution."
"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 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."
"The solution could use mutual segmentation for servers. It would be ideal if you could constitute something like five or 15 groups among the groups of different computers inside Azure."
"Technical support could be improved."
"I would like to see it more easily accessible."
"They should include a cybersecurity feature to improve the protection of the systems. They could do better in terms of the pricing model. Its price keeps on changing. Their technical support can also be better."
"Azure could be made more user-friendly."
"Microsoft Azure's design language is a little too basic."
"Due to the pandemic, I haven't been able to utilize their full resources. This has made it complicated to scale up. I hope this will be resolved after the pandemic."
"There is room for improvement in the product's AI capabilities and real-time data processing features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using the cheapest option available, which costs $50 per month."
"This is a pay as you go solution. There is no license and it is usage based."
"The program is cheaper than others."
"I would rate DigitalOcean's pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"There is no licensing fee but there is a subscription cost based on how much RAM and storage you require."
"The solution provides the cheapest cloud in comparison to the other cloud solutions."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing is cheap."
"The cost is more or less the same across all cloud service providers."
"Microsoft Azure is expensive."
"Its price should be optimized so that we can use more features."
"I am currently on a pay-as-you-go subscription and my customers are going to be on a three-year contract. For what is offered in the three-year package it is quite reasonably priced."
"The cost-benefit equation for Azure is very good, particularly for small applications. However, Microsoft should do much, much more to improve how costs are communicated and how to forecast them. The Azure Pricing Calculator is not useful."
"It is competitive with other public cloud providers, and its price is very close to different cloud providers. There is not a noticeable difference between different cloud providers. Otherwise, it would be a risk for them to have services that were much more expensive than their competition. They're pretty much neck to neck on pricing."
"Currently, we do not have anything reserved. There are no reservations that we have built into the Azure environment, so all of our licensing is on a consumption basis. As things spin up, those licenses spin up."
"This is an expensive product."
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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
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
46%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...
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...
 

Also Known As

Digital Ocean
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about DigitalOcean vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.