DigitalOcean is a specialist provider that’s best suited to developers who want to deploy an affordable cloud infrastructure. The problems start to kick in if you’re a rookie user who needs plenty of support or if you need to cancel your trial or ask for a refund. Like any web host, it has pros and cons, and so as long as you know what you’re getting into, you’ll do just fine.
Web hosting by developers, for developers
DigitalOcean offers what it calls a developer cloud: a network of virtual machines that are designed to allow you to scale up as your website grows. CEO Mark Templeton was behind the explosive growth of Citrix Systems, and the company now serves over a million developers in 195 countries across twelve different data centers.
DigitalOcean operate 3 offices worldwide in New York (U.S.), Cambridge (U.S.), and Bangalore (India).
Visit DigitalOcean.com (5$/Month)
Unlike other hosting companies, DigitalOcean specializes in cloud computing and doesn’t offer shared or VPS hosting. When you first land on the website, it can be hard to tell what it actually does. It clearly focuses on attracting web developers and its stripped back homepage aims to deter non-techy visitors.
The question is, is it the perfect host for you?
In this article, I’m going to help you to figure that out, and I’m going to share a few of my own experiences along the way. Are you ready? Good. Let’s get started.
Features
Heavy duty tech tools (if you know how to use them)
As DigitalOcean has a heavy focus on working with developers, you won’t find standard features like free domain names, free backups, SSL certificates, or even instant customer support.
However, if you’ve got technical know-how, you can create and maintain your own bespoke cloud server featuring everything from floating IP addresses to private networking, just be warned, its features are not as straightforward to use as with other providers.
Product Ecosystem
Despite focussing solely on cloud hosting, DigitalOcean has no shortage of options to choose from. It offers different platforms for different use cases, from its scalable droplets for app deployment to its spaces solution for file storage and its “worry-free” database hosting. You can choose which products you’re most interested in and only pay for what you use.
Top Security
DigitalOcean protects your data from end-to-end with extra encryption included by default. It’s not foolproof, but it is better than most and you can always enhance it with additional layers of security, as long as you know a little coding and can follow DigitalOcean’s online tutorials.
Choice of Server Locations
With DigitalOcean, you can take your pick of where you’d like your primary server to be located, from Germany and the Netherlands to India, Singapore, Canada, and the USA. It also allows you to run speed tests on each of those locations from right within the dashboard. However, it’s always worth running tests using an external tool for a second, impartial opinion.
Tools and Integrations
On top of the company’s web-based control panels and command lines, DigitalOcean also taps into a bunch of APIs and includes some one-click installers, although some people have had problems getting them to work. It also has collaboration tools for full teams and integrations for a range of common dev tools. It even integrates with Slack — if you can get that integration to work in the first place.
Ease of use
Honestly, DigitalOcean isn’t going to win prizes for its accessibility any time soon. Its core audience is seasoned developers, and so the emphasis is more on providing functionality and scalability at a low price than on making it easy for you to find your way around the interfaces. Still, it does have some pretty cool ease-of-use features that are worth a mention.
Create an Account
Creating an account with DigitalOcean is refreshingly easy, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that it has one of the more pleasant onboarding experiences on the marketplace. The problems start if you try to contact support, which is pretty much non-existent throughout the setup (any really any other) process.
Connect a Domain and Install WordPress
In fact, there’s a strange disparity between how easy it is to create an account and how tricky it can be to carry out other tasks. Connecting domains and installing WordPress can be too complex for beginners because you’ll need to fiddle with SSH keys and command terminals, but developers will have no problem getting started.
Comprehensive Documentation
Perhaps it’s just a developer thing, but DigitalOcean has an impressive set of documentation including a public knowledge base. Its “Write for DOnations” program invites people to submit knowledge base articles and to get paid for them, with a matching amount being paid to charity. This means that it has an impressive amount of technical content just waiting for you to tap into it.
Choose Only the Resources You Need
Because the system is cloud-based, it’s easy for you to select and pay for only the resources and functionality that you need. Other hosts tend to group the offerings together into different packages, but DigitalOcean keeps its prices low by allowing you to strip it back to the bare minimum.
Advanced Server Management
The DigitalOcean console provides some visual server management tools, but it also provides SSH access or management via a web-based Linux console. If you want to use something like cPanel, you’ll need to install (and pay for it) yourself, so you’re likely to need at least some command line experience if you plan on managing your cloud server yourself.
Performance
