Cloud-based applications and storage have become more and more popular in the last few years. Sometimes, it will be a more cost-effective way, as you don’t need a lot of physical space on your computer. Sometimes, it is easier for remote employees to access projects they are working on including work from home or do a little overtime after office hours.
There are many different cloud companies in motion, but some of the largest names are Amazon and Google. Another one that sticks out and gives you everything you need is DigitalOcean.
DigitalOcean is an amazing company both with its ethics, pricing that will work together with your budget, and some of the best features. There are loads of reasons why you should choose DigitalOcean, as a company to work with. In this Complete Guide to DigitalOcean you will learn more about who they are, how they operate, and some of the various benefits that they offer.
What is DigitalOcean?
The company launched in 2011 and was founded by Alec Hartman, Mitch Wainer, Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky, and Jeff Carr. It is based in New York City.
The purpose of the cloud hosting company is quite simple. It will provide an easy-to-use online platform for customers to transfer projects to the cloud. It will make it easier to increase the work and provide developers with accelerated processes including an interface that they will definitely like.
Since its launch in 2011 DigitalOcean has increased at an exponential rate. With a customer base of more than 550,000 developers, they are some of the most reliable and trustworthy cloud hosting platforms in the business.
What Are Droplets?
The virtual machines of DigitalOcean are called “droplets.” It has 5 types of droplets: Basic, General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, Memory Optimized, and Storage Optimized.
The main advantage of using the droplets is that they let you create and evolve the new machines with a high simplicity if you happen to get a lot of demands at the same time. Moreover, the type of droplet that you choose will depend on factors, such as traffic. For example, if you have an increasing blog you might need to select a basic droplet.
Reasons to Use DigitalOcean
The first thing why you should use DigitalOcean is because of the pricing. In January 2018, DigitalOcean did a brave move and gave customers a large storage increase for the same price. In that way, all of their customers get more for less money. The bold move shocked tech gurus across the worldwide web. An example of their new hosting plan is that you can get 1GB of RAM, 25GB of SSD storage, and 1 CPU core for $5 on a monthly fee. This is cheaper than other web hosting companies that offer the same services. This is a part of what makes DigitalOcean so attractive.
The second thing is that DigitalOcean is both an incredibly fast, simple, and effective service that might make things a lot easier for your business. The tool is effortless and helps you to create better apps in a faster way. It is a platform that combines everything you need into a little nice package that your business can access without any problems. It allows everyone within a team to work on projects on time, as well as giving your customers better software.
The third thing why you should choose DigitalOcean for your company is the global availability, which means that you can deploy to any of the regions DigitalOcean operates in. In that way, you can create international teams who can benefit from an improved communication worldwide. DigitalOcean makes it possible for people to work as part of a team. Everything within the platform will be protected, and you will receive alerts straight away to make sure you never miss information or other activities.
Besides that DigitalOcean have a great security and customer support team. They offer you a twenty-four-hour support system, seven days a week, and without disappointment. You can always keep track of news or address if you have any concerns. DigitalOcean also has a community where you can ask questions that might come up.
Top Features of DigitalOcean
Digital Ocean’s 99.99% uptime makes it one of the most consistent online platforms available right now. The high level of security and data protection might be why so many customers are using the system.
Easy navigation and a simple control panel are refreshing to all developers. The API facilities give the users a great balance of control, which ensures you a great result and personal experience.
Pay Only for What You Use
The pricing strategy is very simple. Uses will only pay for their actual usage, which means no expenses on hours you have not used.
The monthly limits make sure that you will never spend more money than expected; no matter how many droplets you have produced.
Droplets
Droplets are one of the main features at DigitalOcean. Droplets are in lots of different dimensions and configurations for compute servers, from 1 CPU Droplets for $5/mo, and up to 32 CPU servers using the newest Intel chips.
It is known as a scalable computer service, which provides you with add-on storage, security, and monitoring capabilities that run production applications quite effortlessly. The Droplets are available in eight different locations in the world.
Moreover, Droplets are re-sizable which means that you can send them around the world without any problems. It is also simple to upgrade them, as well as get the essentials out right away so you can worry about the rest later.
DigitalOcean is mostly known for its Droplets, but it also has several additional features. Let us look at the most important features.
Kubernetes
With Kubernetes, it is easy to scale up and deploy containerized apps in clusters. By using DigitalOcean, your business can get all the key elements of Kubernetes for free. It means that you only have to pay for the resources that you are paying without any extra fees.
Load Balancers
It is simple to implement load balancers on DigitalOcean. Once they are set up, the load balancers work hard to increase your traffic to several droplets. The load balancers ensure that you will get the most ideal experience. Thus, you will have to pay a small amount or an hourly fee for the load balancers.
One-Click Apps
DigitalOcean offers you “one-click apps” for your droplets. By using the one-click apps you will be able to save more time. These apps include Lamp Stack, WordPress, MySQL, Ruby On Rails, Docker, Node.js, etc.
Collaboration and Reliability
The company has made it incredibly simple for teams to get together and collaborate in building DigitalOcean. As part of this, the teams work together and are paid in one invoice.
How to Get Started With DigitalOcean – Complete
It is really easy to open an account at DigitalOcean as you just need to sign up with your email, whether you have a Google, or GitHub account. They will not charge you any payment before you start using the different services, but are you using PayPal then you might need to purchase $5 to proceed.
In the next step, you will have to create a Droplet. A large number of customizable choices might be a bit overwhelming, that is why DigitalOcean has a “Help Me Choose” section if you are confused about what to select. The section will help you with every little detail, clarifying each term and guide you to what kind of online traffic can be sustained within each plan.
Afterward, you can select your data center region and method of verification. Here you can choose between a password and SSH keys. If you are selecting the password, then there will be some harsh requirements like length, uppercase letters, the password cannot end on a number or special character, etc. They also allow you backups, but it might cost you an additional $1 per month per Droplet.
DigitalOcean will guide you all the way and tell you everything you need to know; everything from the smallest detail and what you need to do next. It includes logging into the Droplet via SSH, creating an SSL certificate, and setting up an Apache virtual hosts file. Does it still sound intimidating to you? Don’t worry. The guides will go through the whole process and you don’t have to remember anything you learn on the way.
Hosting Plans for Individuals, Small Businesses, and Developers
One of the best selling points about DigitalOcean is the wide range of available plans. The different plans give more flexibility, which makes DigitalOcean a perfect option for both individuals and businesses. There will be no struggle to find a solution custom-made to your specific needs.
There is a regular plan assortment from one server to four, while memory can change from 512 MB to 8 GB.
The TB transfer rate can be somewhere from 1 to 5 depending on the plan while the SSD Disk space starts at 20 GB and expanse to 80GB.
The most popular plan offers:
- 1 GB memory
- 1 core processor
- 30 GB SSD disk
- 2 TB transfer
If you think this is too simple or small for your business then DigitalOcean is also offering high-volume plans for developers that need a larger range.
Pros and Cons of DigitalOcean
Several things are worth noticing about DigitalOcean. They offer six popular Linux distributions, which give them a large market.
One possible downside for some people might be that payment is made through a credit card system. However, the use of hours and monthly spending caps balances it out. Furthermore, you can pay via a lot of different methods, including PayPal. This is a large bonus.
DigitalOcean does the transfer to a cloud server faster and simpler than ever before. With a high level of flexibility available, DigitalOcean is one of the most effortless platforms among the top companies in the field.
Advantages of DigitalOcean
- Digital Ocean is a complete cloud engine that includes virtual machine, Kubernetes, app engine, storage, database, and many more.
- Their platform is easy, economical, scalable, and adaptable for web, rest API, and software development.
- Quick deployment.
- Affordable pricing.
- Server quality is great.
- Reliability is top.
- Droplet backups are easy to enable and affordable.
- Documentation and tutorials are excellent.
Disadvantages of DigitalOcean
- It might be a bit hard for beginners.
- Even if you are not new to this field, the setup of the server can take time.
- No live support available for the user.
- They are not offering essential pre-installed systems like Bitnami apps, ODOO, multisite WordPress, and a few others.
Conclusion
DigitalOcean is a brilliant, wide-ranging solution that will fit everyone’s needs, but it might require some basic technical knowledge. For those who are uncomfortable around long lines of codes, then systems offer other affordable plans that fit most businesses.
Hopefully, this Complete Guide to DigitalOcean has given you a better idea of how it works and what they can offer you. They are great when it comes to customer communication and satisfaction. It is important to mention that you will always be the first on their mind.
With an easy and simple interface, as well as a system that has been made for efficiency and speed. DigitalOcean will not take a lot of time, but it will make your life easier.