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DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

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Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#111

Post by dougbarrett »

worklogin wrote: post #6
jdoss wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question. How much would you pay to have something that manages the updates and setup for you and give you the sysadmin help when you need it?

That's what Rackspace does. I haven't used them in a while, but it looks like it's ALL they do now. (moved to DO, since it was half the cost and I /do/ have enough sysadmin chops to keep two linux servers patched). http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/compare-service-levels

Rackspace doesn't actively maintain the servers by applying updates, etc. You can go to them if 3rd party software breaks on your servers and they will help you out, but I know for a fact that they don't actively update the servers, and that's a good thing considering you'd want to probably roll that into doing a release where you take that server out of rotation.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#112

Post by proksoup »

gsharma wrote: post #49
proksoup wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DO's UX is a game changer, I personally think is why they have been so successful in what seemed like a crowded market with the "same" business model as the others.

Serious question - What part of their UX do you think is game changer? I use DO and Linode. They both look similar to me. DO does have better UX than AWS, but I think DO is comparable to Linode rather than AWS. On the other hand, I think DO's content guides as a marketing tool is a great asset for them. I haven't seen any other provider do that. Linode had a few guides, but nothing as DO's scale.

It's a lot of little details.

Just looking at the pricing pages only for a minute, not because I think the pricing page is the differentiator, but because I think the effort in details DO put there is evidenced across the experience: - One green sign up button instead of 8 - One option emphasised more than the others - A toggle to see hourly pricing, instead of small print monthly - 4 stats instead of 6

In general, in DO, I find myself not distracted and finding what I need. Less information to process, the right things emphasized.

Linode has improved greatly from the last time I reviewed it ... but still it seems to be a cargo cult of what DO did as opposed to really understanding the value of those details.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#113

Post by Veratyr »

alberth wrote: post #46

Has anyone used Vultr.com? I ask because they have all the same features as DO + way more (e.g. dedicated hosting w/ same great panel, BYO ISO, etc).

I've used them and love them. I did some benchmarks a while ago (standard unixbench and such) and they outperformed DO on every metric. The extra features they have (particularly custom ISOs) are also really nice.

Definitely recommend them, although I use DO exclusively for the Github student credit.

Benchmarks:

Vultr: https://gist.github.com/bobobo1618/0972fc51f49d90fb37af

DigitalOcean: https://gist.github.com/bobobo1618/81aa3f413b99aaab1f0d

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#114

Post by joshburgess »

wooyi wrote: post #109
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #78

I used digital ocean for a while. My experience was bad reliability and random technical issues. I had various very experience ops people verify with me that it wasn't an issue I introduced into the systems running. I went back to dedicated servers at a smallish provider and forgot how nice it can be to not have all the cloud virtualization stuff get in the way. It's just too fragmented among providers in the way the…

Same experience here. A few of my developers migrated our servers to DO 2 years ago to "save" a few hundred dollars. Turns out DO has planned downtime every other month and its cost us 100x more in staff and headache dealing with them. You can't run a SaaS or anything that requires uptime reliability (ie, any sizable business) . I've transferred our main site back to AWS. Also AWS dedicated pricing is now almost the…

So, Digital Ocean doesn't have great reliable up time then? I've been using OpenShift's free hosting tier to host a Ghost blog, and it goes down CONSTANTLY, making it unusable. I was about to start paying the $5 a month plan with Digital Ocean, but I'm not going to if it also goes down frequently.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#115

Post by gukov »

dotBen wrote: post #14

DO has really benefitted from Linode stalling over the past few years. I admire Linode for remaining a bootstrapped business but it feels as though the owners lost their fighting spirit and energy... Perhaps because the small pool of Linode owners felt they made enough money already. DOs announment talks about a storage product, which is strategically important and crucially something Linode has sorely needed for a l…

Xen to KVM was nothing but smooth and my node is now flying.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#116

Post by exacube »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #102
dotBen wrote: post #14

DO has really benefitted from Linode stalling over the past few years. I admire Linode for remaining a bootstrapped business but it feels as though the owners lost their fighting spirit and energy... Perhaps because the small pool of Linode owners felt they made enough money already. DOs announment talks about a storage product, which is strategically important and crucially something Linode has sorely needed for a l…

I disagree, Linode is much superior than DO. I can trust to DO only fault-tolerant services when to Linode I can trust any kind of service to run.

Why?

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#117

Post by [deleted] »

wooyi wrote: post #109
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #78

I used digital ocean for a while. My experience was bad reliability and random technical issues. I had various very experience ops people verify with me that it wasn't an issue I introduced into the systems running. I went back to dedicated servers at a smallish provider and forgot how nice it can be to not have all the cloud virtualization stuff get in the way. It's just too fragmented among providers in the way the…

Same experience here. A few of my developers migrated our servers to DO 2 years ago to "save" a few hundred dollars. Turns out DO has planned downtime every other month and its cost us 100x more in staff and headache dealing with them. You can't run a SaaS or anything that requires uptime reliability (ie, any sizable business) . I've transferred our main site back to AWS. Also AWS dedicated pricing is now almost the…

[deleted]

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#118

Post by chrismarlow9 »

wooyi wrote: post #109
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #78

I used digital ocean for a while. My experience was bad reliability and random technical issues. I had various very experience ops people verify with me that it wasn't an issue I introduced into the systems running. I went back to dedicated servers at a smallish provider and forgot how nice it can be to not have all the cloud virtualization stuff get in the way. It's just too fragmented among providers in the way the…

Same experience here. A few of my developers migrated our servers to DO 2 years ago to "save" a few hundred dollars. Turns out DO has planned downtime every other month and its cost us 100x more in staff and headache dealing with them. You can't run a SaaS or anything that requires uptime reliability (ie, any sizable business) . I've transferred our main site back to AWS. Also AWS dedicated pricing is now almost the…

Heh. Nearly the same thing here but on a personal projects level, no company stuff. I really wanted it to be something I did or for there to be a solution because migration is never fun, but I finally had to bite the bullet.

EDIT: had no idea about the planned downtime. Maybe that explains the random chaos issues I had.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#119

Post by noir_lord »

exacube wrote: post #116
EugeneOZ wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, Linode is much superior than DO. I can trust to DO only fault-tolerant services when to Linode I can trust any kind of service to run.

Why?

A reasonable question

For me :-

* Excellent reliability (no unscheduled downtime in 6 years from 3 to at one point more than a dozen nodes)

* Excellent hardware - when I've benchmarked real production systems on Linode on a $/perf ratio beats DO hands down

* Excellent support - tickets are generally answered in under 30 minutes and staff are knowledgeable

* It just works(TM)

* Straightforward interface and pricing

* Rock solid network, like bulletproof

* I trust them (after 6 years of the above they have earned it)

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#120

Post by grigev07 »

alberth wrote: post #58
username wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also curious about this. The fact that Vultr accepts Bitcoin as payment further piques my interest. Can anyone shed some light on their performance and convenience vs. DigitalOcean? Edit: Found this http://blog.due.io/2014/linode-digitalocean-and-vultr-compar... , which seems to portray it quite favorably.

This doesn't compare against DO but it does compare performance against Rackspace and AWS. https://www.vultr.com/benchmarks/

Slightly objective performance comparison if you ask me. Obviously Vultr is going to say they're better than the competition.
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