DigitalOcean VPS Review: How Good Is This Cloud Host Really?

Server power on demand: With DigitalOcean, you choose your VPS configuration yourself and adjust it flexibly at any time to meet your needs. But how well does this work in practice?

In this review, we take a closer look at setup, management, performance, and costs across DigitalOcean's platform.

Signing up with DigitalOcean is straightforward and takes just a few minutes. You create a new account with your email address or sign in through Google or GitHub. After confirming your email, you'll have immediate access to the dashboard, even before ordering a product.

To finish, you'll need to add a payment method. DigitalOcean typically doesn't require additional identity verification. They only ask you to verify your identity in rare cases, such as payment issues.

After logging in, you'll land directly in the dashboard, which offers plenty of options and information. Right from the start, you'll notice that DigitalOcean is designed for technically skilled users.

The design is functional but fairly plain. The sidebar has many subsections and can feel a bit overwhelming to newcomers. There are no tooltips or contextual help features. However, if you have experience with cloud dashboards, you should feel comfortable after a short time.

One downside is that the dashboard regularly displays ads for additional services and the marketplace. Load times are also unusually long: some pages take up to six seconds to fully load. For a hosting provider, that's not a good sign.

Support is linked in several places, but there's no direct contact option. To create a ticket, you need to click through the Help Center first, a process that takes at least three steps before you can actually submit a request.

The dashboard is only available in English. There's no language switcher or dark mode yet.

VPS servers are called Droplets at DigitalOcean. The provider describes them as scalable virtual machines that you provision either through the DigitalOcean website or directly from the dashboard.

Compared to many competitors, DigitalOcean offers significantly more options during setup. The plans are divided into six main categories that are defined more by their intended use than by overall performance (e.g., CPU or RAM-intensive applications). That's why you should know exactly what you want to use your server for before you start.

Within the six main categories, there's another subdivision by processor type: "Regular," "Premium Intel," and in some cases "Premium AMD." You choose your plan only after selecting the processor brand.

For the data center, you can choose from ten regions. These include locations in Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania. Your choice of location doesn't affect the price.

For the operating system, DigitalOcean offers six Linux distributions to choose from:

You can also upload your own images during server configuration. The marketplace provides you with access to 260 preconfigured applications, including WordPress, GitLab, Docker, MongoDB, and Plesk. Depending on the software, additional costs may apply.

In the final step, you decide whether you need additional storage in the form of Block Storage. The host attaches it to your Droplets like an external hard drive.

Less than a minute after completing your order, your VPS is ready to go. You'll receive a confirmation email and can start right away.

DigitalOcean also offers plenty of flexibility when it comes to server management.

The server action menu in the project overview gives you direct access to important features, such as the web console, backup settings, or block storage.

Within a Droplet project, the second sidebar contains only management features for your VPS. On the main page of each Droplet, you'll also find monitoring for bandwidth, CPU, and SSD usage. However, you can only view the metrics for the past 14 days.

DigitalOcean offers two types of automatic backups, which are not active by default:

Both options incur additional charges and are calculated proportionally based on your plan. The more powerful your Droplet, the higher the price.

Snapshots, which are manually created images of the current system state, also cost extra at DigitalOcean. The price is based on the storage space used per month. The provider recommends shutting down the server before creating a snapshot, but this isn't strictly required.

The recovery system offers significantly more options than many other hosting providers. For example, you can decide whether the VPS boots from a recovery ISO or from the internal hard drive on the next startup. This is helpful for fixing kernel errors or repairing damaged file systems.

For the firewall configuration, you create your own rules for incoming and outgoing traffic and decide which ports and protocols should be allowed or blocked for IPv4 and IPv6.

You can set up additional storage space through volumes with 100, 500, or 1,000 GB, or in a custom size starting at 1 GB. These network-based block storage volumes are flexibly moved between Droplets, expanded, or backed up as disk images. Only one Droplet can access the block storage at a time.

Setup can be handled automatically if you like, including formatting and mounting to the file system. Alternatively, you configure the storage manually.

Scaling your VPS is also flexible: you either adjust CPU and RAM separately or expand SSD storage at the same time. Downgrading the SSD size is not possible.

Switching between plan categories, for example, from a Basic Droplet to a storage-optimized model, is viable. Before switching, DigitalOcean recommends creating a snapshot.

According to DigitalOcean, the estimated downtime during the resize process is about one minute per GB of used storage. In practice, the downtime is often much shorter. After scaling, you'll need to restart your VPS. The new plan and its associated costs take effect immediately after that.

Here's how DigitalOcean's server features compare to other providers:

In our performance test, we measure how powerful virtual servers are, examining the performance of all providers in our comparison across five key areas:

These values help determine whether a server is only suitable for simple web projects or can reliably handle more demanding applications.

Here's how we conduct our VPS benchmarks:

In our single-core test, DigitalOcean only scores 954 points, placing it ninth out of eleven. The median score in our comparison is 1,168 points.

Programs that rely heavily on a single core, such as traditional web applications or many content management systems, can run noticeably slower than with most other hosts.

DigitalOcean also performs poorly when it comes to parallel processing. With 1,652 points, the provider ranks last in our comparison. If you run many processes simultaneously, such as database queries or server-side logic, you'll notice the weak performance.

The pattern continues with random access memory. DigitalOcean achieves 18,921 MiB/s and lands in last place once again. The median is 77,369 MiB/s, representing a huge gap. Applications that move a lot of data between the processor and memory could run noticeably slower here.

Disk performance is a different story. The VPS achieves 115,800 IOPS for small 4K operations, securing second place in our review. The median is 57,700 IOPS. The strong SSD performance benefits database-driven applications and content platforms with many small files.

The network connection is also impressive. With 6,970 Mbit/s, DigitalOcean takes third place. The median is 5,020 Mbit/s. This ensures fast loading times, stable connections, and quick data transfers, especially for modern web services.

To help you compare prices across different VPS providers, we use our own rating system. We compare prices for five specific scenarios:

We only evaluate regular list prices, including VAT or sales tax, as listed on provider websites. Short-term promotions or new customer discounts are not included.

Here's how DigitalOcean's costs compare to other providers:

DigitalOcean offers a wide range of VPS plans that vary significantly in performance and resource allocation. Depending on your use case, you can choose between instance types with shared or dedicated CPUs. Options range from small entry-level solutions to powerful enterprise variants:

Here's an overview of DigitalOcean's VPS plans:

DigitalOcean offers an exceptionally wide range of VPS plans with fine gradations in CPU, RAM, and storage. The following overview highlights some typical packages to illustrate common use cases and requirements:

DigitalOcean offers four support tiers. The free Starter package provides you with access to comprehensive documentation, the community, and the ticket system, but it doesn't include dedicated support contacts.

Direct contact via live chat, Slack, or video call is only available with paid support packages. DigitalOcean doesn't offer a traditional phone hotline.

Response time depends on the plan you choose. According to the provider, it can take up to 24 hours to get a response with the Starter plan. On average, support cases are handled within 48 hours. In our review, we received a response to a simple ticket request in just seven minutes, much faster than advertised.

DigitalOcean's documentation is very comprehensive. The Droplets section alone contains around 50 articles, many with clear step-by-step instructions. The technical quality is high. However, images and other visual aids are often missing.

DigitalOcean's community is a valuable addition to the official support channels. Over 8,000 tutorials cover a wide range of administrator and developer topics. There's also an active forum. If you're using the free support package, you might get help faster there than through the official ticket system.

In customer reviews, DigitalOcean's support receives mostly positive ratings. Many praise the fast response times, technical expertise, and the commitment of the support staff, even with more complex problems. There's occasional criticism too, for example, about security measures that some find too restrictive.

DigitalOcean offers a lot, but it also demands a lot in return. No other provider in our comparison offers as many configuration options, but this flexibility comes with complexity. This in turn makes their services less suitable for beginners.

The high costs don't align with the performance. While new VPS instances are set up quickly and are easily equipped with the right software, the CPU and RAM performance is disappointing in our tests. You'll pay extra for backups and advanced support.

DigitalOcean is really only worth it for developers who are willing to accept these drawbacks in exchange for a platform tailored to their specific needs.

What do users think of DigitalOcean? We looked at reviews on various platforms and compiled the most frequently mentioned points:

Decided against DigitalOcean? The following providers could be a viable alternative: