
Amazon Lightsail vs. DigitalOcean - phildougherty
https://blog.containership.io/amazon-lightsail-vs.-digitalocean
======
nickjj
I think this article misses a really important comparison point.

Does anyone know if Lightsail uses the same CPU credit system as t2 EC2
instances?

Details on what CPU credits are can be found at:
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-instan...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-instances.html#t2-instances-
cpu-credits)

Basically if you use too much CPU for too long, AWS will throttle your CPU
usage. This is detrimental to performance in cases where you're not just
idling most of the time.

I've had plenty of apps on DO use 40-60% CPU 24/7 without any performance
degradation or throttling. Will Lightsail do the same?

~~~
tyingq
Another poster has referenced this:
[http://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/posts/amazon_lightsail_1gb_is_n...](http://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/posts/amazon_lightsail_1gb_is_no_match_for_10_vps_from_linode_do_vultr)

It seems to confirm your suspicion. I'm not clear on whether Amazon
implemented it this way on purpose, or if it was just the quickest path to
launch a product, and they'll fix it later.

~~~
nickjj
Thanks for the link. So basically Lightsail isn't even in the same galaxy as
DO unless they drop this constraint.

Edit:

I feel like they did this on purpose. It's tough to imagine an oversight as
large as this slipped through by accident. It's also something developers will
figure out in a matter of minutes while running on their platform.

Hopefully they only have it constrained now to make sure their system doesn't
tumble over and they will lift it.

I guess they avoided to mention it because this pitch doesn't sound too
attractive on stage: "Introducing Lightsail, a VPS competitor platform where
you can get a 1 CPU core machine for $5/month, but understand that if you use
more than a few percent of the machine's CPU for any extended period of time
it will result in your CPU being automatically throttled to the point where
your application will likely become unresponsive, and to add insult to injury
we're not really making you aware of this during sign up. On second thought,
just forget about it, continue using what you're using now because this isn't
suited for production in most typical web applications that developers produce
-- it's odd though because that's the market we're trying to cater towards.".

------
ilaksh
The IO performance, CPU throttling, and price per resource lag make Lightsail
a joke compared to DO.

But at least Lightsail comes with a cape.
[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/does-
digita...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/does-digital-
ocean-come-with-a-cape-and-a-motorcycle-like-amazon-lightsail)

------
bargl
It took me a while to figure out how to minimize the share via social media
bar that pops up on the left. Which for me seems to block the first 4 letters
on the left hand side at my current screen width. Just a heads up. When I move
to a larger 1080p monitor there is a space on the left so it doesn't block it.
Look at your page with 1600 x 900. Not sure if this is an issue for you but I
thought I'd mention it.

~~~
joekrill
These things drive me insane. It's ridiculous. Do these people only check
their sites on huge monitors?

~~~
Someone1234
Almost nobody checks their pages at 125% or 150%. Even though with higher
resolution monitors these DPI settings are becoming more widely used.

When I loaded the page the first thing I did was highlight that stupid box and
kill it with the developer bar. I'm at 1080p and 125% DPI.

As a general rule, anything that can hover over other content on the page
(from share buttons to menus and beyond) are going to annoy someone and break
someone's experience. No exceptions. If it isn't happening today it will
happen tomorrow.

------
icpmacdo
I really think Amazon is about to kill DigitalOcean with LightSail. I have
already spun up a few instances from LightSail and its almost a carbon copy of
DO but with the power of the AWS ecosystem behind it. I think its now the
prefect platform for startups with still pretty minimal costs but the ability
to have my Node app on LightSail storage resources on S3 and have a managed
database with RDS is a no brainer. I think people are a little too worried
about the difference of a few dollars between AWS and DO now and are missing
the amount of traffic you could handle for less than 100$ a month with
LightSail and the ability to more easily scale later on.

~~~
demonshalo
no! simply no!

DigitalOceans main selling point is not only the price and speed at which you
setup a node. The main selling point is their freaking awesome support and
their tutorial/help pages that help a lot of people with troubles that might
have.

AWS, with its amazing stack size, cannot compare in those 2 departments IMO!

~~~
icpmacdo
I don't have experience with DigitalOcean support but there tutorial/help
pages are indeed very useful, I have used them a lot.

Its an issue for DigitalOcean that if someones trying to install MongoDB on
Ubuntu they can still use any VPS provider they want. The instructions that DO
provides are not platform specific to them.

I still do want DigitalOcean to succeed though, I think there great and still
love there product. I think building an S3 competitor(Not expandable volume
storage) would make them more competitive. Its still going to be really tough
though, right now any side project is going to be default on LightSail.

~~~
nickjj
Their support is remarkably good, even on the lowest tiers. The most I ever
had to wait was a few hours for a reply, and usually it's 30 minutes or less
to get an initial response.

Over the years I've opened up a number of tickets on $5-20/month droplets for
all sorts of problems. Even problems that were my own fault, which I received
answers through either blog posts they linked me to or step by step
instructions on how to fix it.

On multiple occasions they helped me recover from catastrophic errors like
having SSH locked down to only accept connections with SSH keys but the SSH
service died because I ran out of disk space. In this case they can mount a
recovery disk to your droplet which will let you get at your file system.

------
tyingq
In the "Where DigitalOcean Beats Lightsail" section, you might add that the OS
selection on Lightsail is extremely limited. I believe you can currently only
choose Amazon Linux or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

~~~
Someone1234
And surprisingly no Windows on either one.

Which is a little odd as you can get Windows running on an EC2 instance
(t1.micro) for $10.95/month. Although maybe the margins on Lightsail are too
thin so Amazon doesn't want to pay Microsoft's licensing fees.

And before someone whines about Windows, keep in mind Windows Server 2016 now
installs headless by default and will run on 512 MB of RAM (which is what the
$5 Lightsail offering has).

~~~
tyingq
You might like Vultr ... they let you install any OS via an ISO file. For
Windows: [https://www.vultr.com/docs/windows-custom-iso-with-virtio-
dr...](https://www.vultr.com/docs/windows-custom-iso-with-virtio-drivers)

Keeps the pricing down, since you're the one responsible for licenses.

~~~
Someone1234
A Windows Server 2016 license costs $350~700. There's absolutely no way that
saves money on small instances over any reasonable duration. It would take
tens of years to come even close!

The way Microsoft licenses Windows Server to Azure/AWS/etc is completely
different to how they license it to you or I, and the pricing is hard to
compete against at the lower ends.

~~~
tyingq
YMMV. Saves me money since I already have a license. I assume many migrate to
the cloud.

------
phlyingpenguin
"In the performance testing section later on in this post, we'll see how those
numbers hold up to stress tests."

I don't see it. Did I miss the performance testing section?

~~~
phildougherty
Whoops! Good catch.

Performance comparison is coming in part 2. Sorry! Editing.

~~~
mynegation
Speaking of cacthes, one your headers says:

Pricing & Billing Gaurantees

should be

Pricing & Billing Guarantees

~~~
phildougherty
Fixed! Thank you!

------
ryptophan
AWS currently not offering Lightsail/EC2 hosting within Canada, as well.
DigitalOcean has been in Toronto for a while. Certainly not an important
detail to many, but it was for me.

AWS has been saying they will open in Canada for quite a while... seem to keep
pushing the date further and further.

------
jaequery
I've been a DO customer for years but all it would take to sell me on
Lightsail at this point is if Lightsail performance beats DO. but from what
i'm seeing, it seems like that's not the case?

~~~
coolsunglasses
It's not close. (I use both at work and have used both for a long time)

------
eruditely
I completely disagree that digital ocean has a loyal customer base, their
customer support has been degrading across time and minor annoyances such as
wp servers keep failing and you have to reset your instance, just minor stuff
like that has been adding over the years and I've been wondering if a company
will show up so I can move my stuff over there.

This looks like it will be it. They just got so annoying it was unbearable.

------
KevinationDev
A great comparison between DigitalOcean and LightSail. I was looking for this.

One small correction, AWS doesn't have any more the largest footprint when it
comes to regions and revenue. Microsoft Azure now has more regions and DCs
than AWS and Google combined. And for the revenue they reached 15B dollar mark
by last quarter, making it the the largest and the most profitable cloud
provider ever. Who would thought that is possible two years ago!

------
chrisper
When I looked at lightsail the last time, it only allowed me creating anything
in Virginia. DO allows you to create droplets all over the world.

------
rospaya
I won't use Lightsale precisely because it exists.

While AWS is a great collection of services, it is needlesly complicated to
use and at times very frustrating. Using it at work is fine since the span of
services is so wide I can forgive the awful user experience, but if I have to
vote with my feelings, I choose the service I use in private, when I pick what
I like.

In this case DigitalOcean.

------
rogerdpack
wish they'd matched linode. Oh wait they have poor performance, never
mind...though actually the bandwidth might be useful cost-wise still, relative
to "normal" AWS bandwidth costs at least, until you reach the max, then
apparently it's $0.09/GB, whereas DO is $0.02 per GB for overage (and I think
they don't actually charge for it yet even LOL).

digitalocean is being attacked on all sides, interesting. Hard to believe that
giant AWS is trying to imitate one of its upstart competitors...

~~~
k_sze
Who has poor performance? Lightsail, DO, or Linode?

~~~
rogerdpack
lightsail

------
redwood
DO must be unsustainably burning cash. Acquisition by a larger player keen on
developer mindshare seems inevitable

