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DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

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Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#291

Post by prepend »

Satam wrote: post #153
prepend wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for cloud services. Cloud prices have been deflationary for decades. And this makes sense as software has a near zero marginal cost and efficiencies in hardware and data center management are occurring faster than “normal” inflation.

But the prices for everything else that the company's owners and employees consume are rising.

That’s true but that’s what I meant by software has near zero marginal cost. Employees scale massively with cloud providers.

I mean a single sysadmin can automate and manage a million vms. So if the admin’s salary goes up 10% then that’s almost nothing in terms of costs for customers.

This is different from other brick and mortar businesses where the price of corn goes up 10% so the price of potato chips goes up 10%.

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#293

Post by gamblor956 »

OMG I'm going to have to pay $6 for my $5 droplet now. The sky is falling!

For point of comparison, the increased annual cost is the equivalent of 3 Starbucks mocha lattes, or a single latte at any of their hipper indie competitors.

Nobody in either DO thread has actually suggested a competitor that offers the same product for less. (Hertzner is not comparable.) Of course switching to a VPS costs less; you have to do more of the work yourself. And if $12/year increase really is a backbreaker, you can go even cheaper by going straight to bare metal (i.e., self-hosted on your own hardweare).

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#294

Post by ptman »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #83
Dork1234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this compare with prices for AWS/Google Compute Engine/Azure ?

You can get a GCP micro VPS for free, “forever”. I have a free VPS always running, and run beefier VPSs as-needed for my personal projects. For my needs, GCP and Colab (sometimes Pro, sometimes free) are convenient and time-savers. You can also get a free Oracle Cloud VPS, and Alibaba provides good cloud value also. Many years ago, I enrolled in Microsoft’s BizSpark program, and if they still do that, check them out.…

Here's a comparison of some free clouds: https://paul.totterman.name/posts/free-clouds/

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#295

Post by treesknees »

oefrha wrote: post #162

I've been using Linode instead of DigitalOcean since ~2015 IIRC. I just checked their pricing page [1] and find it pretty hostile and confusing. First, you won't see any tech spec at all without clicking on a card; "starts at $blah/mo" means precious little without tech specs. Then, once you click on "Droplets" you get another grid(s) of cards where the tech specs are teeny-tiny and comparison is very painful. Compar…

I've been a Linode user since 2011, my only minor complaint is I wish they had kept the 10% annual payment discount. Seems like they jumped over to hourly billing to match the competition (I suppose if you really are spinning up VMs for less than a month, hourly is nice. But if you're running your VM 24/7 for 11 years... you just get to pay slightly more than you were previously.)

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#296

Post by Brian-Puccio »

oefrha wrote: post #162

I've been using Linode instead of DigitalOcean since ~2015 IIRC. I just checked their pricing page [1] and find it pretty hostile and confusing. First, you won't see any tech spec at all without clicking on a card; "starts at $blah/mo" means precious little without tech specs. Then, once you click on "Droplets" you get another grid(s) of cards where the tech specs are teeny-tiny and comparison is very painful. Compar…

I’m also a happy Linode user since … a decade? more? I remember the phpBB forums for their customers from forever ago. I’m sure there are cheaper out there, but given the already pretty low cost, I’m not interested in jumping ship. I hope their recent acquisition doesn’t change much.

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#297

Post by simongray »

jakub_jo wrote: post #2

For the fellow European (edit: & US) HN crowd I can highly recommend Hetzner's Cloud offerings: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

The servers (I just tried booting the second-cheapest one) do seem much faster than DigitalOcean's and in my case they're actually cheaper, even without the coming price increase. However, one thing I noticed is that you have to pay extra for a floating IP (€3 + VAT) which is AFAIK free with DigitalOcean—or at least I didn't notice in on my bill. Something to keep in mind. I will probably switch over anyway.

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#298

Post by Brian-Puccio »

Macha wrote: post #220
jedimastert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the $5 thing was a direct answer to Linode's offerings?

I thought Linode's "Nanode" ($5 VM) was several years after DO. I remember wishing Linode had a lower tier option and contemplating moving to DO back when Linode started at $20 for their lowest spec.

That’s my memory, too. Linode for a long time didn’t have a product at that very low price point.

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#299

Post by treesknees »

Macha wrote: post #220
jedimastert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the $5 thing was a direct answer to Linode's offerings?

I thought Linode's "Nanode" ($5 VM) was several years after DO. I remember wishing Linode had a lower tier option and contemplating moving to DO back when Linode started at $20 for their lowest spec.

I went back to check and indeed my annual billing for Linode's lowest tier was was $216 annually (12 * $20 * 0.90 for the 10% annual payment discount.)

Linode then dropped the price in 2014 to $10/month [1], and eventually in 2017 introduced the $5 option [2]. DO was definitely around well before then, but I do recall DO becoming more popular around that time. Because for $5 it was awesome to spin up a VM to test a new app.

[1] https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/11th-linode-birthday-10-l...

[2] https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/high-memory-instances-and...

Re: DigitalOcean: New $4 Droplet and updated pricing

#300

Post by julianlam »

gamblor956 wrote: post #293

OMG I'm going to have to pay $6 for my $5 droplet now. The sky is falling! For point of comparison, the increased annual cost is the equivalent of 3 Starbucks mocha lattes, or a single latte at any of their hipper indie competitors. Nobody in either DO thread has actually suggested a competitor that offers the same product for less. (Hertzner is not comparable.) Of course switching to a VPS costs less; you have to do…

On its own it's not significant, but we run a fleet of ~150 droplets. Costs add up.
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