Best Alternative to DigitalOcean?

29 pointsghettosoak8y ago42 comments

I have been with DigitalOcean for about 5 years now. I have decided that I would like a new VPS provider. 5 years ago, Linode was the closest competitor, closing the gap with its' customer service, but losing out to the attractive price of its competitor.

However, I know that Google and Amazon offer competing services – which carry their own implicit standards – but I guess I’d like to give my money to a ‘smaller’ competitor where possible?

Ultimately: I need a VPS that I can run a current version of Ubuntu on. Whereupon I can run PHP, MySQL, Node.js and its respective trimmings. Something I can play around with, but something that I can ship code and run my various products on.

Customer support is a significant selling point. So too is ease-of-use, and functionality of updates.

I'm willing to consider an increase in monthly price. I currently pay USD 5 per month.

As an American, I like the idea of my server running somewhere near home. As an expat living in Switzerland, I do have a certain partiality to Swiss products.

Any experience / suggestion is welcome. Help!

42 comments

codegeek8y ago

You can look at https://vultr.com

I use both vultr and DO and they are very comparable. Vultr customer service has been decent and their pricing is competitive.

whb078y ago

I like them as well. Some locations offer even a $5 instance/month. Very responsive and intuitive UI as well.

BartBoch8y ago

I think 2 locations (NJ and Florida?) have $2,5 servers also. Support is worse to what it was (I think it is outsourced, at least some of it), but still ok-ish.

cdvonstinkpot8y ago

$5/month is rather minimal, IMO. I was happy with Prgmr @ their $20/month service level.

Customer service is supposedly minimal with them, in accordance with their motto: "We don't assume you are stupid", but were helpful the few times I needed it. A bit slow maybe, but problem solved well within a week. (Turns out Rsync.net's ssh console has limited bash commands available, so Prgmr's wiki instructions to dd my disk there didn't work)

https://billing.prgmr.com/index.php/order/main/packages/xen/...

croo8y ago

https://www.ramnode.com/

I had a small vpn for 2 years with zero downtime. Cheap too. Servers are in the Netherlands and several places in the USA.

givehimagun8y ago

Man - I don't know if they are a small company or a large corporation...but I've been with them for 5 years and I can't remember a single time it was slow/had problems/flickered a monitor/anything.

It was rock solid when I was learning Chef and provisioning 5-7 small servers on/off to learn how devops and microservices would work. I remember $1/month instances ($3/quarter).

kull8y ago

What is the main reason of moving away from DO? We are using them for the last few years and it’s a great ride.

akulbe8y ago

I was wondering the same thing myself. Digital Ocean had been great for me.

RantyDave8y ago

Well, sounds like support is a big issue. I'm a bit ... well, what do you expect for $5/month?

2 more replies

DeepYogurt8y ago

I'm a fan of linode myself.

vkraskov8y ago

Given no reason and the language looks more like some kind of a market survey..

tedmiston8y ago

Your requirements are pretty generic, and are met by every cloud provider. You have some choices to make in terms of whether you want more of a PaaS (Elastic Beanstalk, App Engine, Heroku) vs CaaS/IaaS approach (EC2).

That said, DO is something I still use and like today. What's your main motivation for switching?

retrack8y ago

(Disclaimer: founder of Exoscale)

To address your partiality to Swiss products, check out Exoscale for a similar (5$) simple experience with advanced features in Datacenters in Geneva, Zurich, Vienna and Frankfurt. https://www.exoscale.com

slipwalker8y ago

Server4You ( despite negative reviews i have seen ) has served me well ( very fair price for an unmetered 100Mbps link ) for over 5 years now. On the really cheap VPS options, just make sure to have your services running under a supervisor-daemon ( i use monit ) to preserve your sleep.

book_mentioned8y ago

Show HN: VPS Comparison – Automated tests to compare VPS by yourself | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245538

veddox8y ago

Strato? It's not exactly what you would call a "small" competitor, but its servers are in Germany and it's subject to German security and privacy regulations (which I consider a big bonus).

brewpackage8y ago

I think you should use Vultr, There's good interface as same as DigitalOcean, and pricing is more flexible. And about speed, Vultr has good internet speed.

bobxyz8y ago

I'm used to Transip.eu, very good product, very good services.

https://www.transip.eu/

sabarasaba8y ago

A bit offtopic, but whats the reason you would like to move away from them? I just created a dropplet for a nextcloud server and the experience was painless

billconan8y ago

I will try upcloud next. Heard it’s the fastest.

shanecleveland8y ago

I'm pretty happy with webfaction.com. Been using them for many years. Easy and continually upgrade plans and offerings.

shanecleveland8y ago

Right. Will occasionally see increases in space, memory, bandwidth, etc., within existing plans. They have also expanded offerings available.

vram228y ago

By upgrade, do you mean they offer more features or resources later, for the same price for which you were getting less of the same, earlier?

sigjuice8y ago

My reason to give up Digital Ocean would be to get proper IPv6 support. Right now, DO assigns you a /124 address.

jgowdy8y ago

I’ve had a good experience with SSD Nodes

theshank8y ago

Linode is awesome (and has a$5 plan too!)

BenjiWiebe8y ago

+1 for linode from me!

s3nnyy8y ago

Try appuio.ch that is a young Swiss PaaS.

st3fan8y ago

Looks interesting but they don’t seem to be targeting a non German speaking market?

s3nnyy8y ago

https://www.appuio.ch/en/index.html

neilwilson8y ago

https://www.brightbox.com

Simple straightforward IaaS

st3fan8y ago

I would personally never host anything in the UK with their bizarre dragnet laws.

marcusfrex8y ago

Transip.eu is solid. I have been working with them since 2014. And i have (and still) used Linode and DO too.

bobxyz8y ago

Yes, transip.eu is good services !

mechris8y ago

I just moved from DO to OVH. More for less, and an Arch image...

znpy8y ago

Hetzner? Online.net/Scaleway?

justinclift8y ago

As a data point, Scaleway's responsiveness to things doesn't seem all that great.

Saying that as a new-ish (only a few months) user to them.

For example, their CentOS 7 ARM7 images come with a bug that stops yum from updating correctly.

This is a simple PR to fix the problem, yet hasn't even been looked at in the month since it was created:

https://github.com/scaleway/image-centos/pull/26

That aside though, the hardware/software/capabilities seem pretty decent. And (for me) the fix is automatically applied when servers are spun up so their sluggish response doesn't negatively affect me.

jjeaff8y ago

I've used scaleway for a while for small projects. And lately, every single instance size shows out of stock. I shut down and instance and couldn't start it back up due to their being no available instances. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

1 more reply

trillic8y ago

I love Scaleway's offerings but their lack of diversity in DC locations leaves a lot to be desired.

liveoneggs8y ago

joyent

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

42 comments

codegeek8y ago

You can look at https://vultr.com

I use both vultr and DO and they are very comparable. Vultr customer service has been decent and their pricing is competitive.

whb078y ago

I like them as well. Some locations offer even a $5 instance/month. Very responsive and intuitive UI as well.

BartBoch8y ago

I think 2 locations (NJ and Florida?) have $2,5 servers also. Support is worse to what it was (I think it is outsourced, at least some of it), but still ok-ish.

cdvonstinkpot8y ago

$5/month is rather minimal, IMO. I was happy with Prgmr @ their $20/month service level.

https://billing.prgmr.com/index.php/order/main/packages/xen/...

croo8y ago

https://www.ramnode.com/

I had a small vpn for 2 years with zero downtime. Cheap too. Servers are in the Netherlands and several places in the USA.

givehimagun8y ago

Man - I don't know if they are a small company or a large corporation...but I've been with them for 5 years and I can't remember a single time it was slow/had problems/flickered a monitor/anything.

It was rock solid when I was learning Chef and provisioning 5-7 small servers on/off to learn how devops and microservices would work. I remember $1/month instances ($3/quarter).

kull8y ago

What is the main reason of moving away from DO? We are using them for the last few years and it’s a great ride.

akulbe8y ago

I was wondering the same thing myself. Digital Ocean had been great for me.

RantyDave8y ago

Well, sounds like support is a big issue. I'm a bit ... well, what do you expect for $5/month?

2 more replies

DeepYogurt8y ago

I'm a fan of linode myself.

vkraskov8y ago

Given no reason and the language looks more like some kind of a market survey..

tedmiston8y ago

That said, DO is something I still use and like today. What's your main motivation for switching?

retrack8y ago

(Disclaimer: founder of Exoscale)

slipwalker8y ago

book_mentioned8y ago

Show HN: VPS Comparison – Automated tests to compare VPS by yourself | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245538

veddox8y ago

Strato? It's not exactly what you would call a "small" competitor, but its servers are in Germany and it's subject to German security and privacy regulations (which I consider a big bonus).

brewpackage8y ago

I think you should use Vultr, There's good interface as same as DigitalOcean, and pricing is more flexible. And about speed, Vultr has good internet speed.

bobxyz8y ago

I'm used to Transip.eu, very good product, very good services.

https://www.transip.eu/

sabarasaba8y ago

A bit offtopic, but whats the reason you would like to move away from them? I just created a dropplet for a nextcloud server and the experience was painless

billconan8y ago

I will try upcloud next. Heard it’s the fastest.

shanecleveland8y ago

I'm pretty happy with webfaction.com. Been using them for many years. Easy and continually upgrade plans and offerings.

shanecleveland8y ago

Right. Will occasionally see increases in space, memory, bandwidth, etc., within existing plans. They have also expanded offerings available.

vram228y ago

By upgrade, do you mean they offer more features or resources later, for the same price for which you were getting less of the same, earlier?

sigjuice8y ago

My reason to give up Digital Ocean would be to get proper IPv6 support. Right now, DO assigns you a /124 address.

jgowdy8y ago

I’ve had a good experience with SSD Nodes

theshank8y ago

Linode is awesome (and has a$5 plan too!)

BenjiWiebe8y ago

+1 for linode from me!

s3nnyy8y ago

Try appuio.ch that is a young Swiss PaaS.

st3fan8y ago

Looks interesting but they don’t seem to be targeting a non German speaking market?

s3nnyy8y ago

https://www.appuio.ch/en/index.html

neilwilson8y ago

https://www.brightbox.com

Simple straightforward IaaS

st3fan8y ago

I would personally never host anything in the UK with their bizarre dragnet laws.

marcusfrex8y ago

Transip.eu is solid. I have been working with them since 2014. And i have (and still) used Linode and DO too.

bobxyz8y ago

Yes, transip.eu is good services !

mechris8y ago

I just moved from DO to OVH. More for less, and an Arch image...

znpy8y ago

Hetzner? Online.net/Scaleway?

justinclift8y ago

As a data point, Scaleway's responsiveness to things doesn't seem all that great.

Saying that as a new-ish (only a few months) user to them.

For example, their CentOS 7 ARM7 images come with a bug that stops yum from updating correctly.

This is a simple PR to fix the problem, yet hasn't even been looked at in the month since it was created:

https://github.com/scaleway/image-centos/pull/26

jjeaff8y ago

1 more reply

trillic8y ago

I love Scaleway's offerings but their lack of diversity in DC locations leaves a lot to be desired.

liveoneggs8y ago

joyent

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse