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The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

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Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#21

Post by ridruejo »

crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

What AWS gives you is much more flexibility and a broad ecosystem of services. So you can start small with a micro in the free tier but be able to scale to Netflix-level if/when you need it. If you want one-click like deployment capabilities you can use third-party software like Bitnami images http://bitnami.com/stacks , which are also available in the AWS marketplace (disclaimer, I am a cofounder of Bitnami). We have also a Cloud management tool that offers a similar Digital Ocean experience on top of AWS http://bitnami.com/cloud and that has a free tier.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#23

Post by icehawk219 »

crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

Something I noticed when taking a new job at a startup recently is that people seem to latch onto the idea of a USP being some fancy bell or whistle. The idea that "everything else in the market is terrible, we're making it easier" can set you apart seems to be lost on a surprisingly large number of people.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#24

Post by lelandbatey »

crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

I agree completely. DigitalOcean is a classic case of an improved experience through restricting options. You're not able to customize your vps, you have to fit your stuff into their categories, but for many of us that's all we want. It's a factor to keep in mind when building things for others.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#25

Post by sker »

crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

> their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use

Yes, I've even used them several times on non-DO servers because they're quite good and rank high on Google.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#26

Post by eli »

ridruejo wrote: post #21
crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

What AWS gives you is much more flexibility and a broad ecosystem of services. So you can start small with a micro in the free tier but be able to scale to Netflix-level if/when you need it. If you want one-click like deployment capabilities you can use third-party software like Bitnami images http://bitnami.com/stacks , which are also available in the AWS marketplace (disclaimer, I am a cofounder of Bitnami). We hav…

Sure, and AWS is great but it's also not magic. It's unlikely you can literally just take the code that was running on a micro instance and scale it up to a big site in multiple zones without a lot of work.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#27

Post by yock »

mberning wrote: post #14

I tried them out a few months ago looking to move my infrastructure from AWS to DO. I was experiencing terrible IO performance on a fairly expensive instance. Submitted a support ticket about it. Their response was 'this is normal'. Killed all my droplets and canceled my account the next day. To me they are running a pretty transparent pump and dump scheme. Promise a great service, sell it at a loss, get a ton of use…

That's a pretty serious accusation. Do you have any other evidence beyond "This one instance I had performed badly"?

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#28

Post by unethical_ban »

Seems no one here so far has mentioned Rackspace.

Let's start by saying that DO has fewer features for a complex deployment:

No load balancing,

no private subnets,

(IIRC) no IPv6 at the moment.

No "cloud files" or S3 equivalent,

the scaling isn't as automatic as RAX or AWS can provide.

DO can't host Windows (which still matters for many existing operations, don't fool yourself).

RAX gives more information and granularity on its VM levels.

Finally, support. RAX can do managed services, dedicated advisors, IT support and servers for sensitive data. DO has none of this.

---

There are two things DO does that I appreciate (though neither concept is new):

* $5 hosting. RAX is a minimum of $16/mo now, for the same VM strength.

* Application deployments. The ability to one-click deploy Wordpress/Gitlab/etc. is pretty damned awesome.

DO is great for technically competent people who don't need a lot of infrastructure, or otherwise have a consistent level of server/bandwidth requirements for their servers.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#29

Post by unethical_ban »

showerst wrote: post #16
jjoe wrote: post #8

I feel like DO has no competitive advantage. They sell servers but then anyone with a reasonable infrastructure and programmers on payroll can scale the way they have. So while it's an impressive rise, it can't be taken for granted. Because all could falter over night. That's just the nature of the business and industry.

There are 4 avenues I think you can take in this market - 1) Price 2) Scalability/API (As in AWS style of instant spinup/spindown) 3) User experience for the dashboard and creation process 4) Configurability of your instances DO is currently fighting on 1 and 3 with a dash of two, which I think is very smart. They're not fighting with lowendbox providers for the lowest possible price, but they're competing with linod…

You hit the nail on the head in a way I didn't regarding the core competencies in the market.

I think RAX and Amazon kick ass at 2 and 4, and DO is working on 1 and 3.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#30

Post by bndr »

crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

Isn't Linode exactly the same? Easy to use web interface, a lot of documentation on getting the things up and going and the ability to resize linode on the web.
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