Research the DigitalOcean autoscaling options. Autoscale works buy having a preconfigured web server template that fires up additional servers based on a metric like CPU utilization. When your web server hits that threshold another server will be booted up and share the load. Of course, the web servers need to share a common database so your database needs to be centralized on its own droplet or container (Kubernetes) and you will need a load balancer to share the load across the web servers.

Based on these factors, you can expect the cost of your Digital Ocean services to increase but it’s probably not as expensive as you might think. Only the database needs a decent size droplet in your case. The web servers can be the $5 droplets. I don’t know how DigitalOcean handles load balancers but you could use another $5 droplet to handle that to if they are too expensive.

Hi there. The first thing I said in my reply was research DigitalOcean autoscaling options, I did not intend the reply to be anything more than a little guidance.

There will probably be some documentation on the DO site somewhere to help you configure this, but it is not as simple as adding droplets to a load balancer. Front end servers will need to be configured, the load balancer will need to be configured and your back-end may need some configuration.

As a safeguard, always backup your app and database before making any significant changes and create a rollback plan to put things back how they were before you started.

Don’t drop any more cash into your setup until you understand everything that needs to happen, otherwise you may get caught by some surprises or face technical challenges that if you cannot overcome yourself, will require paid assistance.

I would advise you to lab it up on your personal computer before you try it on the DigitalOcean platform.

Good luck.