DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is simpler and more predictably priced. AWS has broader services. For startups needing compute, databases, storage, and basic networking, DigitalOcean provides equivalent capability at lower complexity. For startups needing 20+ AWS services (ML, IoT, serverless, etc.), AWS is more appropriate. Many startups use DigitalOcean for production and AWS for specialized services.

Droplets start at $4/month (512MB). A typical startup stack (2 Droplets + PostgreSQL + Redis) costs $50–$100/month. App Platform starts at $5/month for dynamic apps. The $5,000 credit covers 50–100 months at basic usage or 8–20 months at moderate production scale.

Yes. DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) provides managed K8s with a free control plane. You pay only for worker nodes (Droplets). One-click cluster creation, auto-scaling node pools, and integrated load balancers. DOKS is the simplest managed Kubernetes for teams without dedicated DevOps.

Yes. DigitalOcean provides 99.99% uptime SLA for Droplets, managed databases with automated failover, and global data center presence (8 regions). Thousands of startups run production on DigitalOcean including GitLab (early infrastructure) and many YC companies.

Yes for standard workloads (web servers, databases, object storage). Migrate EC2 instances to Droplets, RDS to managed databases, S3 to Spaces. Services without DigitalOcean equivalents (Lambda, DynamoDB, SageMaker) require architectural changes. Migration is straightforward for web applications and complex for AWS-native architectures.

Each Droplet includes a generous bandwidth allocation (1–10TB/month depending on size). Outbound bandwidth beyond the allocation costs $0.01/GB. For most startups, the included bandwidth covers all traffic. This is significantly simpler than AWS's data transfer pricing.