DigitalOcean’s features, plan with price & benchmark result

Official information

1. Official site
2. Official Twitter
3. Official blog
4. API Manual
5. Admin page for users

Free coupon

You can get free $100 coupon by registering from this link.

Features of DigitalOcean

Short summary

VPS which has most advanced cloud functions.

Overall features

DigitalOcean is one of the big VPS which is satisfying cloud hosting’s principals.

1. Elasticity: You can dispose the server after creation of the server any time without losing money in vain
2. Redundancy: You can keep serving the service even if 1 of the server goes down(LAN&LB are necessary)
3. Extendable: You can scale up the server with data

DigitalOcean is providing most advanced cloud functions such as App Platform, Managed database, Managed Kubernetes(k8s) and so on.

Load balancer is supporting free SSL certification of “Let’s encrypt” with auto updating and wild card SSL certificate, which is great.

AWS is expensive and you don’t want to use it, but it is a VPS that is chosen by those who want to enjoy cloud-based functions as cheaply as possible.

Price and plan of DigitalOcean

Servers

DigitalOcean Basic

DigitalOcean CPU-Optimized

DigitalOcean CPU-Optimized 2x SSD

DigitalOcean General Purpose

DigitalOcean General Purpose 2x SSD

DigitalOcean Memory-Optimized

DigitalOcean Memory-Optimized 3x SSD

DigitalOcean Memory-Optimized 6x SSD

DigitalOcean Storage-Optimized

DigitalOcean Storage-Optimized 1.5x SSD

App Platform

A service that can build services with container-based infrastructure and service like DbaaS.
The demo video shows you how to publish a site simply by selecting a Github repository and pressing a button.

Features

1. With the trigger of pushing the source code to Github’s Main branch, it will be reflected on the site without downing the site
2. Scaling up by increasing the server specs or increasing the number of servers can be easily done from the management screen and the system will not stop during that time
3. Up to 3 sites with static files are free
4. DbaaS is available for database

There are Starter (free), Basic, and Professional plans.
Starter is limited to static sites, Basic and higher plan can run dynamic sites using PHP, etc.
Professional plan can use the dedicated CPU.

Starter (sites with static files only) is free for up to 3 sites ($3/month for 1 site if exceeded).
Cost of Basic and Professional plan change depending on the specs as follows.

Basic

Professional

Serverless functions

Billing based on the amount of used memory x seconds during the request.

There is a free quota.
90000 GB seconds = 25 GB hours

If you exceed the free quota, you will be charged 0.0000185/GBsec ($0.0666/GB-hour).

Go
Node.js
PHP
Python

are supported as programming languages.

If you want to write Hello World in each language, here they are.

Golang

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

type Request struct {
	Name string `json:"name"`
}

type Response struct {
	StatusCode int               `json:"statusCode,omitempty"`
	Headers    map[string]string `json:"headers,omitempty"`
	Body       string            `json:"body,omitempty"`
}

func Main(in Request) (*Response, error) {
	if in.Name == "" {
		in.Name = "stranger"
	}

	return &Response{
		Body: fmt.Sprintf("Hello %s", in.Name),
	}, nil
}

Node.js

function main(args) {
    let name = args.name || 'stranger'
    let greeting = 'Hello ' + name + '!'
    console.log(greeting)
    return {"body": greeting}
}

exports.main = main

PHP

<?php
function main(array $args) : array
{
    $name = $args["name"] ?? "stranger";
    
    $greeting = "Hello {$name}!";
    echo $greeting;
 
    return [
        'body' => $greeting,
    ];
}

Python

def main(args):
      name = args.get("name", "stranger")
      greeting = "Hello " + name + "!"
      print(greeting)
      return {"body": greeting}

Managed Database Service (DBaaS)

Managed DB of so-called DataBase as a Service.

・No setting/management required
・ Free daily backup & recovery to that point in time
・Automatic recovery by spare server in case of failure
・Scale up possible
・You can choose from PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, and Redis

There is such a feature.
At least one Standby is required to ensure system redundancy.

Back servers can be selected in the same categories as servers: Basic, General Purpose, and Storage Optimized.

Basic

General

Storage Optimized

Features of managed Kubernetes (k8s)

Managed Kubernetes itself doesn’t charge any additional fees, but you pay for the used servers.
Due to the configuration, it is necessary to create at least 3 servers, so if the fee for a single server is $10, the minimum fee will be $10×3=$30.

Container Registry

Docker Image registration management is possible within the DigitalOcean infrastructure, which help you to bring up new container environment in quicker & stabler way.

Block Storage

100GB for $10/month.
Expandable up to 16TB.

Object Storage

250GB for $5/month.
Comes with a free transfer limit of 1TB per month.
$0.02/GB if exceeded
Transfer amount is $0.01/GB if it exceeds it.

Static IP Address

It costs $5/month if you don’t tie it to a server instance, but if you do, it’s free.

Load Balancer

Supports 10,000 concurrent accesses, 10,000 concurrent connections, and 250 concurrent SSL connections per second for $12.
Capacity can be expanded horizontally by adding load balancers.
A maximum of 100 load balancers can be deployed, supporting a maximum of 25,000 simultaneous SSL connections per second.

It is great to be able to use free SSL certificate loading on Load Balancer and automatic renewal of SSL certificate.
Also it supports wildcard certificates.
You can also use sticky sessions.

VPCs (Virtual Private Clouds)

Available free of charge.
You can create a closed network with only for your servers.
Your environment will become safer.

Network response time of DigitalOcean’s data center

This is example from Tokyo.
You should choose data center which is closest to your expected users.

Is your provided CPU good one or bad one?

There is performance difference among CPU.
You can check whether it is good one or bad one by checking CPU information.
If you get bad one, it may be better for you to destroy it and create new instance again.

When new CPU becomes available, you should consider to renew instance by taking snapshot of current instance and recreate new instance until you get best CPU.

CPU information for DigitalOcean is available at
CPU list of VPS

DigitalOcean’s cloud function list

DDoS protection and High Availability are not provided for server’s plan but you can get them if you use App Platform.

Benchmark result of DigitalOcean (Unixbench)