DigitalOcean is a major player on the web hosting market and its affordable pricing has attracted many developers and businesses alike.
The company is actually a cloud infrastructure provider and also offers other, arguably more advanced solutions, but with this review, we will cover its cloud website hosting service.
Importance of Web Hosting
Why focus on hosting?
Well, it is a crucial step when presenting your website to visitors and thus potential customers. Your choice of hosting is linked to the speed and security of your website and can thus greatly impact its traffic and user experience.
Google suggests that the loading speed should be under 3 seconds for a user not to consider exiting a desktop site. The speed should be even faster when it comes to mobile sites.
With this aspect of your website being so important, it would be a good idea to carry out a website speed test now and again to ensure that your website is utilizing the pagespeed insights.
When it comes to security, different types of hosting can reflect on how potentially secure your website is.
For instance, shared hosting entails that multiple sites share the same server. This means that if one them gets hacked or is just simply not using proper security measures, there is a risk of it affecting other websites.
With cloud hosting providers, such as DigitalOcean, you can take additional measures to protect your specific website.
To further look into the security of a website, you can conduct a website analysis. The analysis can, for instance, help to reveal whether you have any issues with your SSL certificate aka the Secure Socket Layer.
SSL helps to establish a secure and encrypted connection between the web server and a browser. Essentially, having a working SSL certificate is a sign to the visitor that they can trust the website.
Now that we have familiarized ourselves with the aspects of web hosting, let’s move on to discovering DigitalOcean.
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Introducing DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean was launched in 2011 with a goal to make cloud computing more accessible. Its main target group appears to be developers, however, others can also benefit from their clean interface, good performance and affordable pricing.
There are different ways you could host your website on DigitalOcean. You can either choose to have more control or let the provider manage the infrastructure for you, which would mean easier implementation.
As previously mentioned, DigitalOcean offers cloud hosting, which means that instead of storing your website on a single physical machine, your data is spread around several interconnected, virtual servers.
This type of hosting can offer more scalability as well as customizability since you only pay for what you actually use. But more on that later.
While cloud hosting distributes the data and resources across the virtual network, it still relies on physical servers as well. At present, DigitalOcean has 13 datacenters across the globe, divided across locations in New York, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Singapore, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, and Bangalore.
Having data centres in multiple locations can ensure that there is efficient latency (the time it takes for a web application to respond to user action) and failover (backup operation in case the main server goes down).
Pricing
One of the advantages of DigitalOcean is its customizable pricing. For instance, you can select the amount of memory you need as well as set transfer limits.
DigitalOcean distributes its services through something it calls Droplets (Ocean, Droplets – we see what you did there), which are virtual servers or as described by the company itself “Linux-based virtual machines (VMs)”.
The company offers five different types of Droplets, depending on your needs. The current plans are Basic, General Purpose Performance, CPU Optimized Performance, Memory-Optimized and Storage-Optimized.
The Droplets are charged by the hour – starting at 0.007 USD/hr which is 5 USD per month, but depending on your chosen parameters and features, the monthly price can also reach the level of thousands of USD.
Some services, such as firewalls, are included with each Droplet.
Pros and Cons
- Adaptable pricing
- Performance
- Clear interface
- Technical nature
- Limited support for some operational systems
As mentioned in the section above, one of DigitalOcean strong suits is its affordable pricing, which you can essentially control by monthly caps according to your needs.
Websites hosted on DigitalOcean generally perform well in terms of speed and it guarantees a 99.99% uptime, meaning a small chance of your site being offline.
The provider has been praised for its user-friendly interface and it is rather easy to deploy as it explains the different options through its ‘Help Me Choose’ option and guides your steps during the setup process.
While anyone could potentially use DigitalOcean and its service, the company does, to a great extent, focus on developers as customers. It provides a vast variety of customizable options, which can also be combined.
This can lead to some confusion for the average user and leave them feeling overwhelmed.
In addition to the clear interface, part of why it is rather straightforward to use the Droplets is that there are limited choices for some software and products, for instance, Microsoft.
DigitalOcean largely favours Linux as an operating system, so you might run into difficulties if you are unfamiliar with it.
Wrap up
The choice of how and where to host your website can lay the foundation for its success as it can impact both the traffic and user experience. Cloud hosting, for one, can present several advantages in terms of performance and customizability.
DigitalOcean is a major cloud hosting provider, which uses virtual servers called Droplets to get the job done.
There are several types of Droplets to choose from depending on your needs in regards to memory and processing.
The adaptability and performance offered by DigitalOcean are some of its main advantages, however, there are limitations when it comes to operating systems other than Linux.
It can also present challenges for users who do not possess a certain level of technical knowledge.
There are different types of hosting and hosting providers out there, so you need to carefully consider your needs, the purpose of your website and your budget in order to select the right solution for you.
We hope that this review encouraged you to check out DigitalOcean and helped you along on your hosting journey.
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