What appealed to me initially was that they were charging the same as the shady ultra cheap VPS providers but had an actual brand I could trust and were activel

What appealed to me initially was that they were charging the same as the shady ultra cheap VPS providers but had an actual brand I could trust and were actively developing software to make managing their boxes easier. When I first saw them I was in college, so very price sensitive. They also have had a really effective content strategy from the start [0]. The tutorials are mostly on open source stuff you can do on any infrastructure provider, but the quality is pretty good and reinforces the trustworthiness of the brand. [0]: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/get-paid-to-write https://www.digitalocean.com/community/get-paid-to-write