10 Best DigitalOcean Alternatives | Trusted Competitor’s List 2023

Unmanaged hosting is not a mess if you know how to handle it. Shared hosting can not help you in case you have a huge volume of traffic on your website. You will need cloud hosting for this and managed cloud hosting can prove to be a costly solution. You can always choose an unmanaged cloud hosting provider such as DigitalOcean and host your website to handle all the traffic.

In this hosting, you can also scale your cloud machine when you need more resources as per your website traffic. DigitalOcean alternatives can be considered as the best option to host a website that you can scale at your fingertips.

However, the cost is one of the most important factors that would play a role in choosing a cloud hosting provider. There are affordable alternatives to DigitalOcean that will cost you half of the amount you would pay for a droplet of equal resources.

To make the perfect comparison of all DigitalOcean competitors aka alternatives, let’s discuss the smallest VPS plan. In a 5$ droplet, you get a cloud instance powered by 1v CPU, 1GB Ram having 25GB of SSH storage. Using this droplet, you can serve 1000GB of bandwidth as well.

The Cheapest Alternative to DigitalOcean in 2023

DigitalOcean, already being a cost-effective solution, has some alternatives that you should try in 2023. Let’s have a look at the top alternatives in a summary.

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#1 Linode

Linode is a cloud platform built with developers in mind, started back in 2003. Being one of the most experienced providers in the industry, Linode provides world-class performance-ready cloud instances to help you host high-speed apps and websites. The basic VPS instance, called nanode can be deployed for 5$ a month which has enough resources to host your website with an average volume of incoming traffic.

Linode is an unmanaged cloud hosting platform and such a competent DigitalOcean alternative that you can trust. You would require to have a basic understanding of SSH commands and a fundamental level of familiarity with the terminal. However, there is a huge directory of one-click images that you can use to deploy your machine. For example, you can deploy a Linode with preinstalled WordPress. In this case, you won’t have to deal with SSH to install a LAMP stack and then set up the database to install WordPress. Likewise, you can choose from a repository of marketplace apps and community stack-scripts.

The pricing is not heavy on pocket as it starts from 5$ a month. No doubt, you can deploy even more powerful linodes with even more resources. You can deploy a server that has 192GB of RAM and 32v CPU for 960$ per month as well. Vertical scaling yet another feature that you can take advantage of to increase the resources on your cloud server whenever you need that.

I support the fact that you should upgrade your server only when you require more RAM and CPU cores. As far as the server only requires more storage and not the processor’s resource, you should only attach a volume that costs 0.10 USD/GB/month. In Linode, you can create a new volume to your existing cloud server when you need it.

#2 Vultr

Vultr is no stranger to someone who already knows about cloud hosting platforms such as AWS and DigitalOcean. The user interface of the cloud platform is extremely user-friendly and can easily be understood by a newbie. I consider Vultr as the second-best digital ocean alternative for its performance, pricing, user-interface, and ease of use.

Speed, performance, and maximum uptime are all the features that a blogger would need from a cloud hosting provider. Writing this with happiness that I host more than 10 websites on a single Vultr cloud instance for more than 2 years. However, the server I am using is managed by cloudways. But I can not ignore the fact that I have 7-8 WordPress apps on the server and all have been working seamlessly. In a 5$ cloud server that does not have more than 1GB of RAM and 25GB of SSD, hosting this number of websites with sound traffic is a sign of extremely powerful cloud infrastructure.

After a while, I learned how to host a website on a VPS server. Furthermore, tons of SSH tutorials helped me understand how to manage a cloud server and optimize it to further host WordPress sites on it.

Of course, there may be a time when you can’t handle the errors that you have encountered on your server. This is the time when you need someone from the customer support team of your cloud hosting provider. Vultr support is available via the ticket system.

The Pros

1. All the servers you deploy on the Vultr cloud platform will be having 100% SSD storage
2. The platform is easy to use where you can perform a huge range of actions easily
3. Monitor the most important factors on the server such as storage usage, Ram usage, and current bill on the server from the intuitive dashboard
4. IPv6 enabled server costs up to 50% less than a normal VPS server
5. A perfect DigitalOcean alternative that offers not only cloud instances but also block storage, bare metal servers, Kubernetes engine, object storage, load balancers, and a lot more.

The Cons

1. Though you’re charged on an hourly basis for a cloud instance, you will still be billed if there is a stopped cloud server in your dashboard.
2. You need to destroy the cloud instance to stop charges on your card

#3 Upcloud

Upcloud is powerful and slightly better than DigitalOcean when it comes to talking about the features, customization options, billing, and support. The company claims to be the provider of the most powerful cloud instances with almost no significant change in the pricing plans. Only the cloud instance in Finland will cost you 50% more than the cost of a cloud instance in any other available location. Out of 8 server locations from 6 countries, you can choose any to deploy your cloud machine.

I never would want you to compare all the DigitalOcean alternatives on the basis of the cost of the smallest cloud instance. Let’s see what you get for 80$ a month.  For 80$, you get a cloud server equipped with 320GB of SSD storage, 16GB RAM and 6 core CPU. And this; is exactly what you get from any other competitor of DigitalOcean for this cost.

The Pros

1. Not only cloud compute instances; you can also deploy block storage, backup disks and much more
2. Bowser based SSH console system
3. Customer support is available via live chat also which is a rare feature of a cloud platform
4. 3 Days free trial to test the user interface with limited features
5. Automatic/Manual Billing system for a better billing experience
6. Detailed Firewall rules to accept and reject incoming traffic

The Cons

1. The browser-based SSH console will only help you to log-in if you have a problem with the terminal app due to a faulty firewall rule or other bugs. You still need to log in using the user and password in your server just like you will do in the Putty or Command terminal
2. The free trial lets you deploy a 1GB RAM server only. This won’t help you if you want to test their servers to host your website that requires more resources such as PrestaShop and Magento 2.

#4 Kamatera

Kamatera is the cheapest DigitalOcean alternative where you can deploy a basic cloud VPS for just 4 USD per month. The key highlight about the platform is that you don’t need to fill in your card details to be able to avail a free trial for a month. The FREE trial lets you run a cloud VPS server (up to $100) for a month.

The Kamatera platform is very simple, user-friendly, and easy to understand where you can deploy, destroy and manage your cloud instances efficiently. On a quick pricing calculator, I found that you can host a server with 6GB Ram, 350GB SSD storage, and 6 core CPU for just 71USD per month. This is quite cheaper than any other DigitalOcean competitors.

#5 AWS S3

If you don’t like any of the above-mentioned alternatives to DigitalOcean and want to try your luck only for the best performance, AWS is what you should choose. You may end up burning your money if you don’t know how to effectively use the free-tier in the Amazon web services. However, there is no good comparison possible between AWS and DigitalOcean.

I have less to say about the cost because I never could actually understand how they really bill.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did we find the best DigitalOcean Alternatives?

Linode and Vultr are way better alternatives for a person like you who do not want the headache of large VPS bills. AWS pricing model is “pay as you go” and can anytime put you in trouble if you don’t know how to manage the resources of a cloud server. So, be careful and gather enough information. There is a free tier for you to start with but you may still get charged to run your website on AWS.

Another great alternative to it is Contabo. You can deploy a cheap VPS with amazing configuration and resources. Compare here