DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is one of the leading providers of an infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Instead of dealing with hardware and network management, software developers can deploy and scale their web applications on servers DigitalOcean provides.
- Developers can deploy and scale their web applications without worrying about hardware and network management
- Many different Linux distributions to choose from
- Relatively easy-to-use UI
- Inexpensive, at least to get running
- They only charge for actual usage
- High-quality hardware and fast, reliable network providers
- Limited product and service offerings in comparison to other leading IaaS providers
- Slow customer support
- Poor documentation
- Can get expensive quickly
Cloud computing is all the rage today, and for good reason. It allows software developers to focus on software instead of on hardware and networking. DigitalOcean has become one of the leaders of this revolution, mostly because of the ridiculously low prices they charge for a low-end server. A developer can run a web application on one of their servers for as little as $5 per month, and they only charge for actual usage. What's more, DigitalOcean uses high-quality hardware, such as SSD drives, and fast, reliable network providers, and their servers are very stable. Their user interface is also relatively easy to use. Though using DigitalOcean has its drawbacks as well. Its product and service offerings are limited in comparison to solutions offered by likes of AWS and others, and while its customer support is good, it can take a long time for them to answer tickets. Which can limit DigitalOcean's use in mission-critical applications. Also, their documentation is often poor and outdated, and — in spite of their easy-to-use UI — developers still need to be Linux savvy. Finally, while you can get a usable server for as low as $5 per month, as your app scales, so do the prices, and DigitalOcean can get very expensive very fast.