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DigitalOcean vs Scaleway: What are the differences?

Introduction

DigitalOcean and Scaleway are two popular cloud computing platforms that provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). While both offer similar services such as virtual machines, storage, and networking capabilities, there are several key differences that set them apart.

  1. Pricing Models: DigitalOcean primarily follows a fixed monthly pricing model, where users pay a predetermined price for their chosen plan. In contrast, Scaleway offers a pay-as-you-go model, allowing users to only pay for the resources they consume. This can be beneficial for users with varying resource demands or those who are looking to minimize costs.

  2. Data Centers: DigitalOcean has a larger global presence with data centers across various regions, including the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. Scaleway, on the other hand, has a more limited geographical coverage, with data centers primarily located in Europe. This difference in data center availability may be a crucial consideration for users who require specific regional data residency or low latency.

  3. Virtual Machine Types: Both DigitalOcean and Scaleway offer a range of virtual machine types to cater to different workload needs. However, Scaleway differentiates itself by providing a unique offering called "Bare Metal Cloud," which allows users to provision dedicated servers with direct access to physical hardware. This can be beneficial for users who require high-performance computing or have specific hardware requirements.

  4. Managed Databases: DigitalOcean offers a range of managed database services, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis, which greatly simplifies database administration tasks. In contrast, Scaleway does not currently provide managed database services. Users on Scaleway would need to set up and manage their databases manually or rely on third-party solutions.

  5. Object Storage: DigitalOcean offers an object storage service called Spaces, which provides scalable and cost-effective storage for various types of data. Scaleway also offers object storage called Object Storage with similar features. However, DigitalOcean Spaces provides more robust integration with their other services, making it a preferred choice for users heavily utilizing other DigitalOcean services.

  6. Community and Documentation: Both DigitalOcean and Scaleway have active communities and extensive documentation to support their users. However, DigitalOcean has gained a reputation for its exceptional community-driven tutorials and documentation, which are often considered comprehensive and beginner-friendly. This extensive resource base can be particularly helpful for users who are new to cloud computing or require detailed step-by-step guidance.

In summary, key differences between DigitalOcean and Scaleway lie in their pricing models, geographical coverage, virtual machine types, managed database offerings, object storage integration, and community documentation support. Depending on specific requirements, users may prioritize factors such as cost, data residency, hardware access, managed services, integration, or the availability of comprehensive documentation and community support.

Decisions about DigitalOcean and Scaleway

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.

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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.

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Peter Schmalfeldt
Senior Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 60.6K views

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 ).

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Jerome/Zen Quah
Shared insights
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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.

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Pros of DigitalOcean
Pros of Scaleway
  • 560
    Great value for money
  • 364
    Simple dashboard
  • 362
    Good pricing
  • 300
    Ssds
  • 250
    Nice ui
  • 191
    Easy configuration
  • 156
    Great documentation
  • 138
    Ssh access
  • 135
    Great community
  • 24
    Ubuntu
  • 13
    Docker
  • 12
    IPv6 support
  • 10
    Private networking
  • 8
    99.99% uptime SLA
  • 7
    Simple API
  • 7
    Great tutorials
  • 6
    55 Second Provisioning
  • 5
    One Click Applications
  • 4
    Dokku
  • 4
    Node.js
  • 4
    LAMP
  • 4
    Debian
  • 4
    CoreOS
  • 3
    1Gb/sec Servers
  • 3
    Word Press
  • 3
    LEMP
  • 3
    Simple Control Panel
  • 3
    Mean
  • 3
    Ghost
  • 2
    Runs CoreOS
  • 2
    Quick and no nonsense service
  • 2
    Django
  • 2
    Good Tutorials
  • 2
    Speed
  • 2
    Ruby on Rails
  • 2
    GitLab
  • 2
    Hex Core machines with dedicated ECC Ram and RAID SSD s
  • 1
    CentOS
  • 1
    Spaces
  • 1
    KVM Virtualization
  • 1
    Amazing Hardware
  • 1
    Transfer Globally
  • 1
    Fedora
  • 1
    FreeBSD
  • 1
    Drupal
  • 1
    FreeBSD Amp
  • 1
    Magento
  • 1
    ownCloud
  • 1
    RedMine
  • 1
    My go to server provider
  • 1
    Ease and simplicity
  • 1
    Nice
  • 1
    Find it superfitting with my requirements (SSD, ssh.
  • 1
    Easy Setup
  • 1
    Cheap
  • 1
    Static IP
  • 1
    It's the easiest to get started for small projects
  • 1
    Automatic Backup
  • 1
    Great support
  • 1
    Quick and easy to set up
  • 1
    Servers on demand - literally
  • 1
    Reliability
  • 0
    Variety of services
  • 0
    Managed Kubernetes
  • 30
    Scalable
  • 25
    Dedicated
  • 25
    Cost effective
  • 21
    Bare-metal
  • 14
    Open source
  • 12
    Arm architecture
  • 11
    Simple billing
  • 9
    Isolation
  • 8
    Security
  • 6
    Power
  • 5
    Cheap
  • 3
    Good at min money
  • 3
    Static IP
  • 3
    CentOS
  • 2
    Ubuntu
  • 2
    S3 compatible object storage
  • 2
    Terraform integration
  • 2
    OpenVPN
  • 2
    Additional SSD storage in demand
  • 1
    Local Networking
  • 1
    Imagehub
  • 1
    Reserve IP
  • 1
    Image Snapshots
  • 1
    Debian
  • 1
    Gentoo
  • 1
    Linux
  • 1
    Fedora
  • 1
    OpenSUSE
  • 1
    Arch Linux
  • 1
    Alpine Linux
  • 1
    Unmetered
  • 1
    SSH access
  • 1
    Simple UI
  • 1
    IPV6

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Cons of DigitalOcean
Cons of Scaleway
  • 3
    No live support chat
  • 3
    Pricing
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    What is DigitalOcean?

    We take the complexities out of cloud hosting by offering blazing fast, on-demand SSD cloud servers, straightforward pricing, a simple API, and an easy-to-use control panel.

    What is Scaleway?

    European cloud computing company proposing a complete & simple public cloud ecosystem, bare-metal servers & private datacenter infrastructures.

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    Blog Posts

    Dec 8 2020 at 5:50PM

    DigitalOcean

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    What are some alternatives to DigitalOcean and Scaleway?
    Linode
    Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.
    Vultr
    Strategically located in 16 datacenters around the globe and provides frictionless provisioning of public cloud, storage and single-tenant bare metal.
    Heroku
    Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.
    Microsoft Azure
    Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
    Bitnami
    Our library provides trusted virtual machines for every major development stack and open source server application, ready to run in your infrastructure.
    See all alternatives