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The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

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Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#31

Post by reqres »

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 think in a nutshell you're describing Clayton Christensen process of disruptive innovation (or more specifically low end disruption). AWS is catering more and more to its most demanding users. This exposes them at the lower end to developers who aren't as demanding but prefer something simpler that better fits their needs. The way this narrative ends is that DO eats up AWS from below

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#33

Post by noarchy »

bndr wrote: post #30
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.

I haven't used Linode in a few years, but if they offer exactly the same thing, then DigitalOcean wins handily just based on price for many. I know there are other factors that can go into choosing a VPS or similar service, but price is a big deal for many customers.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#34

Post by bryanlarsen »

unethical_ban wrote: post #29
showerst wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think #2 is a strong advantage of digital ocean.

curl https://api.digitalocean.com/droplets/new?client_id=$DO_CLIE...

I didn't need to look that up. It's a pretty standard REST API, with a bit of overuse of GET to make it even simpler. AWS's API is a lot harder to use.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#35

Post by [deleted] »

bndr wrote: post #30
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.

[deleted]

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#36

Post by rgbkrk »

unethical_ban wrote: post #28

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 granula…

Awesome.

Actually Rackspace does have a deployments option under servers that can deploy Wordpress, GitLab, and others. It even handles some of the configuration details right out of the box.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#37

Post by wiremine »

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…

> Digital Ocean is 100x easier and quicker to use than AWS

100% agree. I really think the markets for DO and AWS are different. DO aims at the "I need a few boxes" sort of user, and AWS aims at the "I boxes and other infrastructure" where other infrastructure is databases, auto-scaling services, etc.

DO feels like Linode felt like four years ago: just the basics at a great price point. (I still like Linode, but they are probably competing with both AWS and DO, which is a tough spot to be in).

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#38

Post by ridruejo »

eli wrote: post #26
ridruejo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I completely agree, you would have to re-architect the whole app! I am just saying that it gives you the option to because it provides the services and scale to do so. Digital Ocean is great for $5 dev servers, but it is lacking (at least for now) the rest of services and functionality and scale that makes AWS great.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#39

Post by mlwarren »

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…

Are there any good monitoring tools out there for letting you know if your droplet is having problems? I know DO has a REST api and you can obviously check stuff out via the DO web interface, but I am curious if there are any third party tools too?

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#40

Post by chc »

[deleted] wrote: post #35
bndr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Linode is twice as expensive per MB of RAM, but less expensive per CPU or MB of disk space.
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