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I really like these guys. It's really no-nonsense hosting, which as a developer, is exactly what I need. I've been (stupidly) running my website, VPN, and e-ma

I really like these guys. It's really no-nonsense hosting, which as a developer, is exactly what I need. I've been (stupidly) running my website, VPN, and e-mail servers all on a single EC2 instance, mostly because I had a bunch of AWS credits. I got some Google Cloud credits, so decided to move it there. I then realized that I'm spending $60 a month on a single instance, which despite having "free" money, is stupid. I split everything up into Docker containers, and run them on Droplets now. Sure, I pay $5/month now for each server, but that's fine. One of the e-mail servers is for my wedding; I'll turn it off when I don't need it anymore. The interface for bringing up new Droplets is simple and clean, and lets me do exactly what I need to, no more and no less. If you look at AWS or Google Cloud, there are so many available services that it can be daunting to get simple things going. I mean, it's not that bad, but once you've seen DO's interface, you realize how unnecessary a lot of it is. I would still likely use AWS/GC for cases where I need to respond to changing load needs, which incidentally, is exactly what you're supposed to use it for. A DO + AWS hybrid infrastructure would be most ideal IMHO.

neom 13y ago
Thank you for the kind words. :)
yogo 13y ago
With a little effort you can use the API[0] to spin up or destroy droplets. Sure, AWS and other services do that for you but I think this one of those cases where rolling your own isn't a crazy endeavour. [0] https://developers.digitalocean.com/droplets/ https://developers.digitalocean.com/droplets/
wil421 13y ago
Agreed, as a beginner I found the amount of configuration that is needed to set up an EC2 instance to be overwhelming. After seeing DO's interface and how easy it is to spin up an new droplet I was hooked. Its been a really great and easy testbed where I can test out new things I am learning. Now I can get a VPS running linux serving up webpages with apache in about 20 min. Add in the great price and I have been hooked for over a year.
balladeer 13y ago
That's right. The reason I finally settled with DigitalOcean after trying AWS, GC, RackSpace and WebFaction etc, is it's stupidly simple interface. I start things with just a few clicks and few words typed and then it's just like I am in my good old Ubuntu terminal. Though I run my low volume email server, VPN, proxy, ownCloud on one droplet and it works just fine - no load, no issues.

neom 13y ago

Thank you for the kind words. :)

yogo 13y ago

With a little effort you can use the API[0] to spin up or destroy droplets. Sure, AWS and other services do that for you but I think this one of those cases where rolling your own isn't a crazy endeavour. [0] https://developers.digitalocean.com/droplets/ https://developers.digitalocean.com/droplets/

wil421 13y ago

Agreed, as a beginner I found the amount of configuration that is needed to set up an EC2 instance to be overwhelming. After seeing DO's interface and how easy it is to spin up an new droplet I was hooked. Its been a really great and easy testbed where I can test out new things I am learning. Now I can get a VPS running linux serving up webpages with apache in about 20 min. Add in the great price and I have been hooked for over a year.

balladeer 13y ago

That's right. The reason I finally settled with DigitalOcean after trying AWS, GC, RackSpace and WebFaction etc, is it's stupidly simple interface. I start things with just a few clicks and few words typed and then it's just like I am in my good old Ubuntu terminal. Though I run my low volume email server, VPN, proxy, ownCloud on one droplet and it works just fine - no load, no issues.