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Amazon Web Services vs DigitalOcean

Two sides of the hosting decision: hyperscaler cloud and paaS. When each fits, what it costs, who moves from one to the other, and what makers who chose it say.

Amazon Web ServicesHyperscaler cloud
DigitalOceanPaaSllms.txt
Ask your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗

Which fits you

Choose Amazon Web Services if
  • The widest catalog of building blocks — Lambda, containers, managed databases, queues — to assemble your own infrastructure.

Use it whenYou need a specific AWS service, enterprise customers ask for it, or you have credits to spend.

Trade-offYou wire up networking, permissions and deploys yourself; billing is per service and hard to predict.

Choose DigitalOcean if
  • App Platform deploys from git next to DigitalOcean's managed databases, storage and droplets.

Use it whenYou already use DigitalOcean servers or databases and want managed deploys in the same account.

Trade-offFewer built-in extras than Vercel or Railway, and instances are billed per size, not per request.

At a glance

Amazon Web ServicesDigitalOcean
Used by386 makers' products · 17 open-source projects142 makers' products
Cost at default usagerequests 5 million requests, data transfer out 100 GB, serverless function compute 100 GB-hours$17/mo Pay as you go (Lambda + EC2 t4g.small)—
Downloads4.2M/wk−39% vs npm
PricingPay-as-you-go per service; new accounts get up to $200 in Free Tier credits over 6 months. · paid from Pay as you goPay-as-you-go and fixed monthly plans; Droplets from $4/month; App Platform hosts up to 3 static sites free; promotional credits for new users. · paid from $4/mo (Droplets)
Free tierYesYes
Open sourceNoNo
Incidents, 90 daysfrom its status pageno public status feed24 (4 major)

What makers say

Makers on using it for hosting, from Product Hunt and Starter Story interviews, each linked to the source. Products with a page of their own and fuller notes first.

On Amazon Web Services
We are so excited to integrate with AWS Lambda. Look for our upcoming co-authored blog about how Fleak and AWS Lambda bring goodness to data teams and help them win their time back!
Fleak, the makerSep 2026 ↗
AWS provides the global infrastructure we need to deliver low-latency voice translation to users worldwide. Their reliable services ensure our calls connect seamlessly across regions.
The Banana App, the makerSep 2026 ↗
AWS Lambda's scalability is definitely a game-changer, especially for handling the traffic spikes from a Product Hunt launch. Shoutout to AWS Lambda for making it possible! 🚀
Gan.AI, the makerSep 2026 ↗
152 more on the Amazon Web Services page →
On DigitalOcean
MeteorJS & ReactJS - the web stack I know and can build things fast with Digital Ocean - for file storage (9x cheaper than AWS S3!) Google Analytics - of course! MailChimp - em…
Wheely Sales, the makerApr 2019 ↗
…es our email and chat help desk Asana - project management for issues, bugs, and features Digital Ocean - where all 57 of our servers are housed, they were recently purchased by Amazon.…
ByteStand, the makerApr 2019 ↗
I love cheap, standard VPS nodes - Digital Ocean (and Vultr, and GTHost) do not disappoint! AWS is fine, and has its strong suits, but for compute, just gimme a linux node in a datacenter.
JAMtime.ai, the makerMay 2026 ↗
45 more on the DigitalOcean page →

Loved and watch-outs

Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises.

Amazon Web Services
Most loved
  • It offers a huge catalog of services in one place, from databases to queues to AI. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
  • It scales up and down with bursty traffic without re-architecting. PHPH 2PH 3
  • Its reliability record is something teams are willing to bet a product on. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
Watch-outs
  • Major outages, from long us-east incidents to struck data centers, have taken customer services down. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • Its services can be tricky to configure. PH
On Product Hunt: 5.0★, 282 reviews · mentioned most: reliable cloud services, scalable infrastructure, extensive service offerings
DigitalOceanOn Product Hunt: 5.0★, 83 reviews · mentioned most: cost effective, user-friendly interface, reliable hosting

Who uses each

Amazon Web Services386 makers' products
Ada.imAgentMailAgentplace.ioAgentRAI Context FlowAlchemyzeAmplooAntiquotedAnythingAstridAstrioBeatoven.ai+374 more
DigitalOcean142 makers' products
Actx0AirTrackBotAritectBaboo TravelBasejump AIBitBadgesBlogBowlBoondockers Welcomebrowser extensionBrowserlessByteStandCalm Jobs+130 more
Used by both — often one replacing the other, or each for a different part of the product
Vamah.aiMaildroppaThankboxCrispFeaturebaseImageKitTelnyxZed

What makers pair each with

With Amazon Web Services
Transactional Email
LLM API
Frontend Framework
Payments
With DigitalOcean
Transactional Email
Frontend Framework
Payments
Web Analytics

Neither quite right?

See the whole hosting decision →
VercelFrontend cloudNext.js apps — zero-config deploys and preview URLs.vs Amazon Web Services →
NetlifyFrontend cloudStatic sites and JAMstack apps on any framework.
CloudflareEdge platformCheap global hosting with Workers, plus database (D1) and storage (R2) on the same platform.vs Amazon Web Services →
RailwayPaaSServers, workers and databases deployed together, with almost no configuration.vs Amazon Web Services →
RenderPaaSA Heroku-style platform for web services, cron jobs and Postgres.vs Amazon Web Services →
Fly.ioContainer platformDocker apps that should run close to users in many regions.vs Amazon Web Services →
Hetzner CloudYour own serverA lot of CPU and RAM per euro, in European, US and Singapore regions.vs Amazon Web Services →vs DigitalOcean →
CoolifyYour own serverA Heroku- or Vercel-style dashboard on your own server, with many one-click services.