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DigitalOcean vs Zeit Now: What are the differences?
- Pricing and Plans: DigitalOcean offers a wide range of pricing options, allowing users to pay for the resources they need, with options such as Droplets, Block Storage, Load Balancers, and more. Zeit Now, on the other hand, provides a free tier for small projects and usage-based pricing for larger deployments, which can be more cost-effective for specific use cases.
- Deployment Workflow: DigitalOcean follows a more traditional deployment process where developers have to manually push their code to the server, configure the environment, and manage scaling. In contrast, Zeit Now provides a seamless and automated deployment workflow, where developers can simply push their code and Zeit Now takes care of the rest, including scaling, configuration, and deployment.
- Databases and Managed Services: DigitalOcean offers various managed databases and additional services like Spaces (object storage), Kubernetes, and container registry. Zeit Now focuses primarily on serving static sites, serverless functions, and APIs, and does not offer managed databases or other additional services like DigitalOcean does.
- Customization and Flexibility: DigitalOcean provides users with more control and flexibility, allowing them to customize their infrastructure, install and configure software as per their requirements. Zeit Now, on the other hand, has a more opinionated approach, where developers have limited control but can take advantage of the simplicity and ease of use provided by the platform.
- Community and Ecosystem: DigitalOcean has a larger community and ecosystem with a wide range of resources, tutorials, and community-driven plugins and integrations. Zeit Now, although growing rapidly, has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to DigitalOcean.
- Integration and Continuous Deployment: DigitalOcean integrates with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, and GitLab CI/CD, providing developers with more options for continuous deployment. Zeit Now has its own CI/CD integrations and offers a GitHub app, making it easier to automate deployments directly from GitHub repositories.
In Summary, DigitalOcean offers extensive customization, more managed services, and a larger community, while Zeit Now simplifies the deployment workflow, provides a more opinionated approach, and offers a more cost-effective option for certain use cases.
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.
Pros of DigitalOcean
- Great value for money560
- Simple dashboard364
- Good pricing362
- Ssds300
- Nice ui250
- Easy configuration191
- Great documentation156
- Ssh access138
- Great community135
- Ubuntu24
- Docker13
- IPv6 support12
- Private networking10
- 99.99% uptime SLA8
- Simple API7
- Great tutorials7
- 55 Second Provisioning6
- One Click Applications5
- Dokku4
- LAMP4
- Debian4
- CoreOS4
- Node.js4
- 1Gb/sec Servers3
- Word Press3
- Mean3
- LEMP3
- Simple Control Panel3
- Ghost3
- Runs CoreOS2
- Quick and no nonsense service2
- Django2
- Good Tutorials2
- Speed2
- Ruby on Rails2
- GitLab2
- Hex Core machines with dedicated ECC Ram and RAID SSD s2
- CentOS1
- Spaces1
- KVM Virtualization1
- Amazing Hardware1
- Transfer Globally1
- Fedora1
- FreeBSD1
- Drupal1
- FreeBSD Amp1
- Magento1
- ownCloud1
- RedMine1
- My go to server provider1
- Ease and simplicity1
- Nice1
- Find it superfitting with my requirements (SSD, ssh.1
- Easy Setup1
- Cheap1
- Static IP1
- It's the easiest to get started for small projects1
- Automatic Backup1
- Great support1
- Quick and easy to set up1
- Servers on demand - literally1
- Reliability1
- Variety of services0
- Managed Kubernetes0
Pros of Vercel
- Simple deployment23
- Free tier17
- Free SSL13
- Simple setup12
- Easy custom domain setup8
- Build and deploy via git push4
- One tap build4
- SSR3
- Student1
- SSG1
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Cons of DigitalOcean
- No live support chat3
- Pricing3
Cons of Vercel
- Pricing Unclear1