You can take snapshots instead of using the backup feature. Then you have full control of when you want the "backup".
You're able to generate your own backups using either Snapshots, or running you own server-side.
Snapshots generate full-state backups, meaning they take a snapshot of the entire server, thus they are meant to restore the entire server, including the OS, software, services and data. They function as an image and you can't restore anything specific -- it's all or nothing.
If you specifically need data backups -- content, uploads, databases, etc -- and you don't need a full image backup of the entire server, you'd need to generate the backups on your own as DigitalOcean doesn't provide the means for hourly/daily/weekly/monthly backups in this fashion just yet.
I've had some success backing MySql data.
I've set up automysqlbackup for data. Its super easy to get started. It does daily/weekly/monthly backups out of the box. I'm sure you can configure hourly backups as well.
apt-get install automysqlbackup
I then added a small storage volume to my droplet and symlinked the backup folder to that other device so I'm not actually storing the backups on the same device.
ln /mnt/backup-volume/var/lib/automysqlbackup /var/lib/automysqlbackup
Alternatively you could set up some storage with another service, e.g. Amazon S3 and rsync your backup folder to there so you aren't relying on a single vendor.
Haven't yet sorted out an easy solution for other data.
