DigitalOcean
Cloud hosting provider offering virtual servers (Droplets), managed databases, storage, and app hosting.
HN commenters like DigitalOcean as a simpler alternative to AWS123, with a UI and API they find pleasant to use.45 The most common complaint is that it gets expensive as projects grow67, with others citing poor disk I/O, rude support and API throttling.8910
Why people recommend it
Simpler than AWS · 3
Commenters who left AWS say they no longer have to think much about infrastructure.
“I switched to digital ocean last year and really haven't had to think about infrastructure again.”
“do yourself a favor and use DigitalOcean, it is simple and direct and will let you keep your sanity”
Show 1 more
“The UI is leagues better than AWS and there are really useful API endpoints to control common things.”
UI and API · 2
The web UI and API endpoints are described as pleasant and useful.
“I love Digital Ocean. The UI and the service itself is great.”
“The UI is leagues better than AWS and there are really useful API endpoints to control common things.”
Reliability · 2
Users report smooth operation and long stretches without issues.
“We are migrating some workloads back to DO, where things are usually way smoother.”
“The UI is leagues better than AWS and there are really useful API endpoints to control common things.”
Tutorials · 1
Its blog posts and how-to guides are valued for everyday tech tasks.
“Digital ocean! They make those awesome blog posts about how to do easy tech stuff”
Caveats and dissent
Cost at scale · 2
Some found prices rise quickly once they moved beyond small projects.
“realized how quickly the price ramped up”
“I found their customer support to be rude, and their offerings to be overpriced.”
Disk performance · 1
One team found disk I/O on a small droplet too poor for their needs.
“A 4GB RAM/20GB disk/1vCPU in DigitalOcean costs 7 euros/month with a horrid I/O that can't even run a static site”
Customer support · 1
One former customer found support rude.
“I found their customer support to be rude, and their offerings to be overpriced.”
API throttling · 1
Terraform users report 429 rate limiting with large resource counts.
“Clouds like DigitalOcean will 429 throttle me for making too many plans in a row with only 100+ resources.”
Admin UI · 1
One commenter counts its web console among tedious, slow admin UIs.
“For any horrible web administration UI:”
Often compared with
1 moved from AWS to DigitalOcean
1 moved from DigitalOcean to Hetzner CloudVultr3 comments mention both
1 moved from Vultr to DigitalOceanScaleway1 comment mention both
1 moved from DigitalOcean to Scaleway
1 moved from DigitalOcean to UpCloud
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- We're making Bunny DNS free: because a faster internet won't build itself 2 mentions
- DigitalOcean Seeks $800M in Funding 2 mentions
- Ask HN: Deployed vibecoded apps in prod at scale? 1 mention
- Kitesurf: Agent-first browser that runs in V8 isolates 1 mention
- AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data - $1.7 BILLION 1 mention
- The Forge We Deserve 1 mention
Data: digitalocean.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 14
“I prefer to use Cloudflare pages/workers and a DigitalOcean droplet”
“For any horrible web administration UI:”
“I switched to digital ocean last year and really haven't had to think about infrastructure again.”
“A 4GB RAM/20GB disk/1vCPU in DigitalOcean costs 7 euros/month with a horrid I/O that can't even run a static site”
“realized how quickly the price ramped up”
“I use Digital Ocean and run a Nomad cluster on top of that.”
“We are migrating some workloads back to DO, where things are usually way smoother.”
“I found their customer support to be rude, and their offerings to be overpriced.”
“I love Digital Ocean. The UI and the service itself is great.”
“The UI is leagues better than AWS and there are really useful API endpoints to control common things.”
“Clouds like DigitalOcean will 429 throttle me for making too many plans in a row with only 100+ resources.”
“It's running on the $12/mo DigitalOcean droplet.”
“Digital ocean! They make those awesome blog posts about how to do easy tech stuff”
“do yourself a favor and use DigitalOcean, it is simple and direct and will let you keep your sanity”