
Ask HN: Digital Ocean vs. AWS for client hosting - ryanmccullagh
With Digital Ocean, there is less configuration, and I can probably fit a lot of client sites on a single box. I tried out AWS via Free Tier, while I was able to login to the box, it was a little overwhelming. Digital Ocean is much more easier to configure.
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avitzurel
I use AWS for work (trip.com) and I use DO for everything personal.

I really recommend DO for what you need.

I know it sounds complicated but here's what you should do (it's really NOT
complicated at all).

2 tools

1\. Docker 2\. Nginx

Most likely everything can be on a single instance unless you have customers
with lots of traffic.

Docker to host the customer code with mounting to `/customer-name` etc... so
you have a persistent storage.

If you worry about losing data, you can rsync everything to another server and
hotswap when something fails.

Nginx should be the router/balancer so `client1.com` will go to the docker
host it should go to.

I work this way with all of my blogs and open source projects and it's really
a breeze to manage.

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nanis
I no longer use Digital Ocean for anything after they lost an instance. While
I wasn't caught unprepared, this is something I had never experienced with
Linode (whom I have been using since 2007) and I was simply shocked. I think
they offer the best value for money. Frequent upgrades (RAM, storage etc) are
icing on the cake.

[https://www.nu42.com/2015/06/linode-kvm-
upgrade.html](https://www.nu42.com/2015/06/linode-kvm-upgrade.html)

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reacharavindh
Would you consider Google Cloud Platform? I recently moved my VM that ran my
website and hobby projects to Google cloud and it was a better experience at
the same or lower cost. f1-micro costs $4.4/month and has 0.6 G of memory
Digital Ocean costs $5/month and gives 512M of memory

VM on GCP is closer to Google cloud storage which I use for backups already.

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savethefuture
Sounds like you answered your own question. For VPS hosting I would recommend
DO.

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akbar501
AWS becomes interesting when you want to automate your infrastructure (i.e.
infrastructure as software). When you're not orchestrating your
infrastructure, then its probably overkill.

DO, as you rightly mentioned, is a lot closer to a straight forward Linux or
whatever instance (easier to use). And the prices are very attractive.

I use both and split based on the above. DO is great for hosting web apps /
dynamic web sites at a reasonable price. AWS is great for orchestrated
clusters / large scale production, or for very low cost static hosting via S3.

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jenkstom
Digital Ocean is very reasonable for the price. Not quite as fast as Linode,
but DO has more features. I am really liking the new volumes feature, so I can
add any size file volume to an instance. Or several. It doesn't appear to be
available in all locations yet, so keep that in mind when setting up a
droplet.

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atmosx
AWS instances are more complicated to handle and at the low end I'm sure their
underperform in terms of disk I/O, plus you'll need to build your own AMI or
automate installation (chef, puppet, etc.) to deal with possible instance
retirement.

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moondev
Aws has more knobs to turn. T2.nano instances can be had for under $5 a month
too.

