At this point AWS is so complicated they should be offering an official Cisco-like series of certifications.
Amusingly, that page demonstrates the need for an AWS certification in the first place: the page has over 100 things trying to grab your attention with no focus or clear direction at all. Amazon as a corporate entity seems to go for "maximum information + maximum confusion" in their UX at every turn.
Always worth a re-read: https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
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.
1. No noise on the dashboard and intuitive process flow.
2. Very good forum and documentation. Site:digitalocean.com whatever-your-problem-is and you'll most likely get it resolved.
3. Little features like auto-populating the Gmail MX record values.
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.
