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DigitalOcean vs Microsoft Azure: What are the differences?
Scalability: DigitalOcean offers a limited number of pre-configured Droplet sizes, making it easier to choose the right option for your needs, but limiting the scalability options. Microsoft Azure, on the other hand, provides a wide range of virtual machine sizes and the ability to scale up or down as required, offering greater scalability for different workloads.
Pricing Model: DigitalOcean follows a straightforward pricing model where users are charged a fixed fee per Droplet based on its size. In contrast, Microsoft Azure has a more complex pricing structure, with options for pay-as-you-go, reserved instances, and spot instances, allowing for more flexibility but requiring users to carefully optimize their costs.
Service Portfolio: Microsoft Azure offers a broader range of services compared to DigitalOcean. It includes offerings beyond virtual machines, such as databases, storage, AI, and machine learning services, allowing users to build more complex and diverse applications. DigitalOcean primarily focuses on providing virtual machines and limited additional services.
Global Availability: Microsoft Azure has a more extensive global presence with data centers spread across multiple continents, enabling better options for data residency and low-latency connections in various regions. DigitalOcean has data centers in fewer locations compared to Azure, resulting in limited geographic availability for users.
Managed Services: Microsoft Azure provides robust managed services like Azure App Service, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Functions, and Azure Kubernetes Service, which simplify application development and deployment. DigitalOcean, however, offers more basic managed services and lacks the same level of depth and integration that Azure provides.
Enterprise-level Support: Microsoft Azure offers comprehensive enterprise-level support, with options for different service levels, 24/7 technical support, and direct access to Microsoft experts. DigitalOcean offers support through its customer success team, but it lacks the same level of enterprise-grade support and resources provided by Microsoft Azure.
In Summary, DigitalOcean is an easy-to-use and cost-effective option for smaller-scale applications, while Microsoft Azure offers greater scalability, a wider range of services, stronger global presence, more advanced managed services, and comprehensive enterprise-level support.
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.