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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

"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."
"The customer support team are very responsive."
"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 technical support services are good."
"DigitalOcean is much cheaper compared to Oracle, Amazon, and Google, making it a better option for a startup."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can create a phishing server and use it."
"The user interface is nice, and it is very easy to use. Anyone can use it."
"The product is a cloud solution."
"In general, the entire suite of PaaS is valuable. It enables a true breakdown of IT siloes and allows an organization to embrace DevOps."
"The most valuable features I have found to be the auto-scaling feature and the interface."
"The tool has proven to be valuable for our organization by enhancing the availability and reliability of services. Our website and several applications hosted on it now benefit from improved availability features and increased reliability."
"Being cloud-based saves the provisioning aspect of an on-premises solution."
"The solution is very flexible, it is not limited to Microsoft solutions. It integrates well with other solutions, such as Oracle. There are a lot of templates we are able to use allowing us to reduce the time for configuration."
"The Azure Portal has an advantage in terms of UX making buying resources or downgrading is really easier to understand. AWS has micro, smaller functionalities whereas Azure has more end-to-end focus which makes it easier saving you time and money."
"The design of Microsoft Azure is for it to be scalable and it is scalable."
 

Cons

"I think something needs to be done in terms of technical support."
"The platform could enhance its features, particularly for ETL processes. Additionally, more integration features would be highly beneficial."
"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 solution could improve by having integration with GitHub."
"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."
"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"
"We found the solution to be a bit expensive."
"The technical support for this solution could be improved."
"If you compare it with AWS, it is not very friendly to use. I find the UI better to work with on AWS."
"The authentication method only allows me to have up to 90 users, and there are 2,300 people in the company."
"The quality of some components of Microsoft Azure is not that great. For example, Microsoft has not fixed issues in Microsoft Teams for many years. There are well-known issues that are submitted by customers two years ago and they still are not fixed."
"The local support is fair but it is sometimes limited, the service could be better."
"I would like to see more advanced functionality in terms of information security."
"The tool needs to improve its navigation."
"The solution could improve the stability. However, this could be a configuration issue that we are not been trained."
"Maybe Microsoft could improve its monitoring around the networking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a pay as you go solution. There is no license and it is usage based."
"I am using the cheapest option available, which costs $50 per month."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing is moderate and reasonable for a mid-tier cloud platform."
"The pricing is cheap."
"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 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."
"It is operational expenditure (OPEX). There is no cost upfront. When you start using it, you have to pay the charges. Initially, the cost is less, but after you start using it more and more, the cost will go higher. It is a little bit costly, but that is okay because you get better resources. You also get better support in terms of how you create the resources. Documentation is available, and the SLAs are met."
"The pricing for us is higher because we are using IaaS."
"All cloud services are expensive."
"The licensing fees depend on the number of users that we have."
"I would like to see it more easily accessible."
"There is a license for the solution."
"The cost is a little high and can be more competitive."
"Customers need to purchase additional services because of the complexity of it."
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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%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
45%
Financial Services Firm
9%
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: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.