Amazon LightSail vs DigitalOcean vs Google Compute Engine

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Amazon LightSail

182
392
+ 1
9
DigitalOcean

17.9K
13.1K
+ 1
2.6K
Google Compute Engine

12.2K
9.1K
+ 1
423
Decisions about Amazon LightSail, DigitalOcean, and Google Compute Engine
Tejas Sangoi
Founder, CEO at Thalia Technologies · | 4 upvotes · 42.6K views

Our company builds micro saas applications. Based on the application we decide whether to deploy it over one of our shared servers or on a dedicated server.

We decided to Lightsail over EC2.

  1. Lightsail is a lightweight, simplified product offering that has a dramatically simplified console. The instances run in a special VPC, but this aspect is also provisioned automatically, and invisible in the console.

  2. Lightsail supports optionally peering this hidden VPC with your default VPC in the same AWS region, allowing Lightsail instances to access services like EC2 and RDS in the default VPC within the same AWS account.

  3. Bandwidth is unlimited, but of course free bandwidth is not -- however, Lightsail instances do include a significant monthly bandwidth allowance before any bandwidth-related charges apply.

  4. It has predictable pricing with no surprises at the end.

  5. The flexibility of EC2 leads inevitably to complexity. Whereas for Lighsail there is virtually no learning curve, here. You don't even technically need to know how to use SSH with a private key -- the Lightsail console even has a built-in SSH client -- but there is no requirement that you use it. You can access these instances normally, with a standard SSH client.

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Chose Hetnzer over DigitalOcean and Linode because Hetzner provides much cheaper VPS with much better specs. DigitalOcean might seems like a good choice at first because of how popular it is. But in reality, if all you need is a simple VPS, you won't benefit much from the their oversubscribed datacenters which often underperform other competitors. Linode is also a good choice. They have cheaper options and performs slightly better than DigitalOcean. In the end, choosing a more affordable host helps you save money. That's important when you're running a tight ship.

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Peter Schmalfeldt
Senior Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 64K views

While Media Temple is more expensive than DigitalOcean, sometimes it is like comparing apples and oranges. DigitalOcean provides what is called Virtual Private Servers ( VPS ). While you seem to be on your own dedicated server, you are, in fact, sharing the same hardware with others.

If you need to be on your own dedicated server, or have other hardware requirements, you do not really have as many options with DigitalOcean. But with Media Temple, the skies the limit ( but so is potentially the cost ).

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Jerome/Zen Quah
Shared insights
on
Amazon EC2Amazon EC2DigitalOceanDigitalOcean

DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.

However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.

One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.

Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.

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Stephen Fox
Artificial Intelligence Fellow · | 2 upvotes · 193.6K views

GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.

  • In both cases, the instance much be shut down.

There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.

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Pros of Amazon LightSail
Pros of DigitalOcean
Pros of Google Compute Engine
  • 4
    Low cost
  • 4
    Simple Deployment
  • 1
    Simple pricing scheme
  • 560
    Great value for money
  • 364
    Simple dashboard
  • 362
    Good pricing
  • 300
    Ssds
  • 250
    Nice ui
  • 191
    Easy configuration
  • 156
    Great documentation
  • 138
    Ssh access
  • 135
    Great community
  • 24
    Ubuntu
  • 13
    Docker
  • 12
    IPv6 support
  • 10
    Private networking
  • 8
    99.99% uptime SLA
  • 7
    Simple API
  • 7
    Great tutorials
  • 6
    55 Second Provisioning
  • 5
    One Click Applications
  • 4
    Dokku
  • 4
    LAMP
  • 4
    Debian
  • 4
    CoreOS
  • 4
    Node.js
  • 3
    1Gb/sec Servers
  • 3
    Word Press
  • 3
    Mean
  • 3
    LEMP
  • 3
    Simple Control Panel
  • 3
    Ghost
  • 2
    Runs CoreOS
  • 2
    Quick and no nonsense service
  • 2
    Django
  • 2
    Good Tutorials
  • 2
    Speed
  • 2
    Ruby on Rails
  • 2
    GitLab
  • 2
    Hex Core machines with dedicated ECC Ram and RAID SSD s
  • 1
    CentOS
  • 1
    Spaces
  • 1
    KVM Virtualization
  • 1
    Amazing Hardware
  • 1
    Transfer Globally
  • 1
    Fedora
  • 1
    FreeBSD
  • 1
    Drupal
  • 1
    FreeBSD Amp
  • 1
    Magento
  • 1
    ownCloud
  • 1
    RedMine
  • 1
    My go to server provider
  • 1
    Ease and simplicity
  • 1
    Nice
  • 1
    Find it superfitting with my requirements (SSD, ssh.
  • 1
    Easy Setup
  • 1
    Cheap
  • 1
    Static IP
  • 1
    It's the easiest to get started for small projects
  • 1
    Automatic Backup
  • 1
    Great support
  • 1
    Quick and easy to set up
  • 1
    Servers on demand - literally
  • 1
    Reliability
  • 0
    Variety of services
  • 0
    Managed Kubernetes
  • 87
    Backed by google
  • 79
    Easy to scale
  • 75
    High-performance virtual machines
  • 57
    Performance
  • 52
    Fast and easy provisioning
  • 15
    Load balancing
  • 12
    Compliance and security
  • 9
    Kubernetes
  • 8
    GitHub Integration
  • 7
    Consistency
  • 4
    Free $300 credit (12 months)
  • 3
    One Click Setup Options
  • 3
    Good documentation
  • 2
    Great integration and product support
  • 2
    Escort
  • 2
    Ease of Use and GitHub support
  • 1
    Nice UI
  • 1
    Easy Snapshot and Backup feature
  • 1
    Integration with mobile notification services
  • 1
    Low cost
  • 1
    Support many OS
  • 1
    Very Reliable

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Cons of Amazon LightSail
Cons of DigitalOcean
Cons of Google Compute Engine
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      No live support chat
    • 3
      Pricing
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      What is Amazon LightSail?

      Everything you need to jumpstart your project on AWS—compute, storage, and networking—for a low, predictable price. Launch a virtual private server with just a few clicks.

      What is DigitalOcean?

      We take the complexities out of cloud hosting by offering blazing fast, on-demand SSD cloud servers, straightforward pricing, a simple API, and an easy-to-use control panel.

      What is Google Compute Engine?

      Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Amazon LightSail?
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      What companies use Google Compute Engine?

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      What tools integrate with DigitalOcean?
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      Blog Posts

      Dec 8 2020 at 5:50PM

      DigitalOcean

      GitHubMySQLPostgreSQL+11
      2
      2423
      GitGitHubDocker+34
      29
      42628
      What are some alternatives to Amazon LightSail, DigitalOcean, and Google Compute Engine?
      Amazon EC2
      It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
      GoDaddy
      Go Daddy makes registering Domain Names fast, simple, and affordable. It is a trusted domain registrar that empowers people with creative ideas to succeed online.
      Linode
      Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.
      Heroku
      Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.
      Beanstalk
      A single process to commit code, review with the team, and deploy the final result to your customers.
      See all alternatives