Live data from Hacker News

DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

businesswire.com

21–30 of 100 posts

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#21
post #16
post #8

It blows my mind that this is happening. Back in the day, there were a thousand cheapo VPS providers out there with similar rates. But DO were the ones to put up an extremely simplified interface to spinning up VMs and that has seen them skyrocket (I'm not saying this is a bad thing). At the end of the day, I feel sorry for linode. The guys who offer a much better service (in almost every way) and are often overlooke…

I signed up for DO because they were $5/mo and at the time Linode was $20. Twenty bucks is fine for production but for hobbyist mucking about, which I would classify my usage as, it's a bit steep. I image many users are in a similar situation.

That's a very popular use case and something that has allowed digitalocean to grow so fast.

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#22
post #20
post #8

It blows my mind that this is happening. Back in the day, there were a thousand cheapo VPS providers out there with similar rates. But DO were the ones to put up an extremely simplified interface to spinning up VMs and that has seen them skyrocket (I'm not saying this is a bad thing). At the end of the day, I feel sorry for linode. The guys who offer a much better service (in almost every way) and are often overlooke…

Last time I checked Linode (~2 years ago) they were a bit pricey compared to competition. Maybe this is no longer the case?

Digitalocean is $5 and Linode $10 for the smallest plans. Linode used to be $20 for smallest, but upgraded their hardware and dropped their prices a while ago.

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#23
post #16
post #8

It blows my mind that this is happening. Back in the day, there were a thousand cheapo VPS providers out there with similar rates. But DO were the ones to put up an extremely simplified interface to spinning up VMs and that has seen them skyrocket (I'm not saying this is a bad thing). At the end of the day, I feel sorry for linode. The guys who offer a much better service (in almost every way) and are often overlooke…

I signed up for DO because they were $5/mo and at the time Linode was $20. Twenty bucks is fine for production but for hobbyist mucking about, which I would classify my usage as, it's a bit steep. I image many users are in a similar situation.

Linode also charged you the $20 right up front and held on to it for the month.

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#24

Is digital ocean profitable ? Is the 5 dollars server killing them or putting them on top of chart ?

Yes. Since the second half of 2012. Source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/andreessen-horowitz-b... They're hardly the only VPS provider offering that price point. (Although it's true, many of the others have a slightly fly-by-night look about them. But by no means all of them.)

Sadly 99.9% of the other companies are shitty solusvm customers who dont understand the hypervisors they are using, and completely fail to manage resources properly, resulting in retarded TOS such "a load average of more than 1.0 for more than 15 minutes" results in warning/suspension/ban. You'd be insane to trust any production stuff to retard kiddie hosts from LowEndBox or WHT.

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#25

Is digital ocean profitable ? Is the 5 dollars server killing them or putting them on top of chart ?

I think where they win is when somebody buys a $5/mo server and uses $0.50/mo worth of capacity. They shut down all the hardware they don't need and save the electricity costs.

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#26
post #20
post #8

It blows my mind that this is happening. Back in the day, there were a thousand cheapo VPS providers out there with similar rates. But DO were the ones to put up an extremely simplified interface to spinning up VMs and that has seen them skyrocket (I'm not saying this is a bad thing). At the end of the day, I feel sorry for linode. The guys who offer a much better service (in almost every way) and are often overlooke…

Last time I checked Linode (~2 years ago) they were a bit pricey compared to competition. Maybe this is no longer the case?

At the low pricepoints, Digital Ocean is better priced than Linode. But for more powerful VPS ( 6 Cores+ ), Linode does have better prices.

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#27

Is digital ocean profitable ? Is the 5 dollars server killing them or putting them on top of chart ?

I think where they win is when somebody buys a $5/mo server and uses $0.50/mo worth of capacity. They shut down all the hardware they don't need and save the electricity costs.

We're growing so fast that shutting down hardware is the last thing we would ever do. We have the opposite problem -- it's quite challenging to provision hardware fast enough to keep up with demand. :)

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#29
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this be a better deal than money in exchange for ownership? I mean, they get the money and still have control of the company.

Companies take debt to optimise tax.

Well, I need to ask what does this mean, I appreciate it if anybody can explain in with an example :)

Re: DigitalOcean Receives $50M in Funding

#30
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this be a better deal than money in exchange for ownership? I mean, they get the money and still have control of the company.

Companies take debt to optimise tax.

@edwinyzh as I understand it, basically you deduct the debt from the profit and pay taxes only for the remaining amount. Wikipedia has a very short article on this [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_benefits_of_debt

Post reply on HN