Question

DigitalOcean vs AWS – Which One is Better for Small Businesses?

Hi, my name is Soniya.

I’m torn between DigitalOcean and AWS for hosting my small business website. I need something easy to manage, reliable, and cost-effective. Can anyone share their experience with both?


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KFSys
Site Moderator
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February 10, 2025

Heya,

While I might sound biased, as I’m on a DigitalOcean forum, I’ll say DigitalOcean all the way! First, you get more of a personal touch, and you have a forum to talk with people, discuss how to implement the app you want, decide which feature would be best, and so on.

Additionally, for a small business website, you can just get the smallest droplet, add some swap to it and voila, you have everything ready for it.

If you need more specific guidance on how to do that I’m also happy to help!

Bobby Iliev
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February 10, 2025

Hey Soniya,

I’m personally all in on DigitalOcean. For small businesses, DigitalOcean is the better choice because it’s simpler, has predictable pricing, and doesn’t come with AWS’s complexity and surprise costs.

With Droplets for flexible VPS hosting, App Platform for easy deployments, and Managed Databases that take care of backups and scaling, and DOKS for managed Kubernetes, you get everything you need without AWS’s confusing service sprawl. The UI is clean, the pricing is straightforward, and you won’t have to dig through billing reports just to understand what you’re being charged for.

With AWS you often end up managing things you don’t need, and the learning curve can slow you down. DigitalOcean makes it easy to focus on growing your business instead of dealing with cloud configs.

If you want a more detailed comparison, check out this breakdown: AWS vs. DigitalOcean Cloud Platform.

- Bobby

alexdo
Site Moderator
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February 11, 2025

Heya, @avlok

I’ll also recommend going for DigitalOcean over AWS. As mentioned it has predictable pricing and it does not involve additional complexity in terms of getting your site up and running. We have a lot of tutorials which you can follow to setup your website or even expand how you can upgrade your setup.

You can always start with a smaller droplet and setup your website and in the future you need to upgrade you can do it in no time. I believe DigitalOcean covers all your needs in terms of reliability, easy management and clear pricing.

As mentioned you can always ask here in the community if you have a question or problem and we’ll be more than happy to assist you! :)

Regards

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