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DigitalOcean vs Google Compute Engine: What are the differences?
Scalability and Flexibility: DigitalOcean offers a wide range of scalable cloud computing resources and allows users to quickly scale their infrastructure up or down as per their requirements. On the other hand, Google Compute Engine provides even more scalability and flexibility by allowing users to customize their virtual machine instances with different CPU, memory, and disk configurations, providing more control over their resources.
Pricing Model: DigitalOcean follows a simple and straightforward pricing model where users pay fixed monthly rates for their chosen droplet plans. Whereas, Google Compute Engine follows a more complex pricing model that includes factors like instance usage, storage, networking, and region-specific pricing, making it a bit more intricate to estimate costs accurately.
Service Offerings: DigitalOcean primarily focuses on providing a user-friendly and developer-centric platform with a limited set of services including Droplets (virtual machines), block storage, databases, and load balancers. However, Google Compute Engine offers a broader range of services including virtual machines, managed Kubernetes clusters, AI and machine learning services, GPU instances, and global load balancing, making it a more comprehensive and feature-rich platform.
Global Infrastructure: Google Compute Engine has a larger global presence with data centers spread across multiple regions, providing users the ability to deploy their resources in geographically distributed locations. In contrast, DigitalOcean has a smaller number of data centers located in select regions, which may limit the options for users who require a wider geographical coverage.
Integration with Other Services: Google Compute Engine integrates seamlessly with other Google Cloud services like Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud Spanner, and more. This tight integration allows developers to build and operate their applications more efficiently. While DigitalOcean offers some integrations with third-party services, it does not have the same level of integration with a complete suite of cloud services as Google Compute Engine.
Support and Documentation: Google Compute Engine provides enterprise-level support with options for premium support packages, extensive documentation, and a large online community. DigitalOcean also offers support services, including a knowledge base, tutorials, and a community forum, but it may not be as comprehensive as Google's support resources.
In Summary, DigitalOcean provides a user-friendly and cost-effective platform with simplified pricing, while Google Compute Engine offers more advanced scalability, a wider range of services, global infrastructure, extensive integrations, and enterprise-level support options.
Albeit restricted to only a few places worlwide compared to its peers in the cloud segment, I am yet to find another provider capable of delivering a score over 5000 (Geekbench) in a benchmark on a single CPU machine, and each machine costs $6 a month. For homelab and experienced users who don't need DBaaS or IaaC's, it's a pretty straightforward choice. A more comprehensive review of Vultr's HF machines can be found here.
Chose Hetnzer over DigitalOcean and Linode because Hetzner provides much cheaper VPS with much better specs. DigitalOcean might seems like a good choice at first because of how popular it is. But in reality, if all you need is a simple VPS, you won't benefit much from the their oversubscribed datacenters which often underperform other competitors. Linode is also a good choice. They have cheaper options and performs slightly better than DigitalOcean. In the end, choosing a more affordable host helps you save money. That's important when you're running a tight ship.
While Media Temple is more expensive than DigitalOcean, sometimes it is like comparing apples and oranges. DigitalOcean provides what is called Virtual Private Servers ( VPS ). While you seem to be on your own dedicated server, you are, in fact, sharing the same hardware with others.
If you need to be on your own dedicated server, or have other hardware requirements, you do not really have as many options with DigitalOcean. But with Media Temple, the skies the limit ( but so is potentially the cost ).
DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.
However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.
One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.
Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.
GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.
- In both cases, the instance much be shut down.
There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.