[RickB]

Simple Cloud Hosting, Built for Developers.

Although I think most of you will already know DigitalOcean, I still like to introduce them in this thread.

Basic Company Info
At June 24, 2011 DigitalOcean was founded by Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky and Jeff Carr.
DigitalOcean's headquarters is located in New York, USA.
DigitalOcean is a simple and fast cloud hosting service built for developers. They claim their customers are able to create a cloud server in (less than) 55 seconds. However sometimes it took me more than 15 minutes to get my "Droplet", as they name it, up and running. Fortunately most of the time I was able to deploy my serves in less than a minute!
Straightforward Pricing
DigitalOcean's pricing is pretty straightforward. You only pay for the resources you rent. You pay per hour, so if you just want to test something and use a server for only one hour, you only pay one-time the hourly rate of the plan you chose.
Locations
DigitalOcean offers cloud servers in serveral locations. At first they only had their New York location. They later on expanded to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, San Francisco and Singapore and they now also have a Toronto (Canada), London (United Kingdom) and a Frankfurt (Germany) location.

Plans
$5 a month
512MB RAM
1 Core CPU
20GB SSD Disk
1TB Traffic

$10 a month
1GB RAM
1 Core CPU
30GB SSD Disk
2TB Traffic

$20 a month
2GB RAM
2 Core CPU
40GB SSD Disk
3TB Traffic

$40 a month
4GB RAM
2 Core CPU
60GB SSD Disk
4TB Traffic

$80 a month
8GB RAM
4 Core CPU
80GB SSD Disk
5TB Traffic

All of those packages include:
- Solid-state drive storage
- DNS Management
- a 99.99% Uptime SLA
- Private Networking

To see an actual view of their pricing go to https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

Free credits!
Would you like to pay $5 PayPal or just add a credit card and then get $15-$20 to try out their cloud servers?
Then follow these steps:
1. Register using my referral link, since I referred you, you'll get $10
My referral link: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=5ef0734ea027
Of course, you support me, I get $25 if you spend $25, however have given you $10 then, so it seems fair to me?
2. Use a coupon to get additional credit.
You could use for example this site: www.retailmenot.com/view/digitalocean.com to try out some coupons. Try the ones with the highest value first, to get the most free credit. Unfortunately you only have 12 months to spend all those free credits. Another thing I have to mention: you can only enter a coupon within 30 days after deploying your first droplet.

Thanks for reading!

Regards,

Rick

Correct me if I've made mistakes!

[Mr.Monkey]

I thought it was just CC first charge in order to use such credit. Plus I find them a little pricey. But, hey, as I heard a saying goes. "Buy cheap, buy twice."

[RickB]

I thought it was just CC first charge in order to use such credit. Plus I find them a little pricey. But, hey, as I heard a saying goes. "Buy cheap, buy twice."

Yes it is. You have 2 options to activate:
- Link a credit card to your account. (Of course you won't be charged the first months)
- Pay $5 to get $5 credit to verify you have a PayPal account.

I am really happy with them. The servers are definitely high-quality for a relatively low price.

[Sagnik]

But DO is costly and runs on Brand name. They don't have any exceptional quality to charge like this. Even SYS is cheaper.
I got a dedicated server with 32 GB RAM, 2 x 2TB HDD (120 x 3 GB SSD also available at same price), Intel Xeon E3 1225v2 at €35 per month and €10 per month extra for the first 6 months as setup fee. And it's I/O speed it really nice.
See proof:

I think it is much better than Digital Ocean...
Also, my server came with DDoS protection...I don't think Digital Ocean has that...

[RickB]

Wait a second. It's hard to compare DigitalOcean with OVH. OVH is the biggest hoster in Europe, one of the biggest in the world. They are able to provide such low-price servers, but their support simply sucks. DigitalOcean is not the cheapest hoster, but I don't think there that much expensive. The support is really good (in my opinion) and since I got $100 from the GitHub Education Pack, I actually don't even pay for my server. OVH's I/O is not always that good, their old VPS platform simply had bad HDD drives. (I have no experience with their new platform). They might have improved...

[Sagnik]

@RickB, you don't pay??
And OVH I/O is 150 mbps in HDD. Well...if you contact them via phone, they answer your questions promptly and I don't have problem with that as I call them for free with Skype.
Oh and as far as OVH's cheap prices go, they are able to provide stuff at such low cost because of their high level of automation.

[RickB]

No, I don't pay
Well, I pay with $100 credit I got for free

[Mr.Monkey]

Wait a second. It's hard to compare DigitalOcean with OVH. OVH is the biggest hoster in Europe, one of the biggest in the world. They are able to provide such low-price servers, but their support simply sucks. DigitalOcean is not the cheapest hoster, but I don't think there that much expensive. The support is really good (in my opinion) and since I got $100 from the GitHub Education Pack, I actually don't even pay for my server. OVH's I/O is not always that good, their old VPS platform simply had bad HDD drives. (I have no experience with their new platform). They might have improved...

DO could might as well be in the same ranks as OVH. They are somewhat big, with some huge reputation on keeping stability and maintaining that has kept them in business and popular with "Developers" for years.

If not, then I'd say more comparible to Linode.

[Unixfy]

Yeah, DO is definitely more comparable to Linode. They're apparently special "Cloud" server providers. I can't tell the difference between "Cloud" and regular servers, but...whatever.

Also, just an FYI, if you guys like to pay in Bitcoin there's a DO reseller that takes bitcoin only (although the prices are increased): https://bithost.io

[RickB]

Yeah, DO is definitely more comparable to Linode. They're apparently special "Cloud" server providers. I can't tell the difference between "Cloud" and regular servers, but...whatever.

Also, just an FYI, if you guys like to pay in Bitcoin there's a DO reseller that takes bitcoin only (although the prices are increased): https://bithost.io

Yes, indeed. 

Of course the prices are a little higher, every reseller has to make a little profit. Since DO doesn't have any reseller (or bulk) discounts, as a reseller you need to increase the default prices.

Actually Bithost is quite cheap. Some resellers in The Netherlands are way more expensive.