Choose a cloud provider

ServerPilot makes it easy to host websites at any cloud provider.

The information below will help you choose the right cloud provider for your next project.

Overview of cloud providers

There are many cloud providers to choose from. The most popular are Google Cloud, AWS, and DigitalOcean.

Google Cloud

Google Cloud is the fastest growing enterprise cloud provider. Google Cloud has a modern interface, a good CLI, useful documentation, and new features are added frequently.

Learn how to create a server on Google Cloud.

AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the first enterprise cloud provider and still remains the largest, though they are losing market share to Google Cloud. AWS can be difficult to use.

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a standard cloud provider that is less complicated for new users than the enterprise cloud providers.

Learn how to create a server on DigitalOcean.

Comparison of cloud providers

Price

For small projects, standard cloud providers like DigitalOcean are often less expensive than enterprise cloud providers like Google Cloud. The table below shows the cost of nearly equivalent servers without backups enabled at DigitalOcean and Google Cloud.

Provider	vCPUs	Memory	Disk	Monthly price	Machine type
Google Cloud	2	7.5 GB	25 GB	$73.20	n1-standard-1
DigitalOcean	2	8 GB	25 GB	$63.00	General Purpose, regular CPU

However, DigitalOcean is not less expensive in general. For example, Google Cloud allows choosing the disk size separately from the machine type. To resize the above DigitalOcean server to have a 200 GB disk, the server would end up costing $272.00/month. To increase the disk size of the above Google Cloud server to 200 GB, the server would end up costing $192.20/month.

Backups are an area where DigitalOcean is usually much more expensive and less flexible than enterprise cloud providers.

• On DigitalOcean, daily backups add 30% to the cost of the server and are only retained for 7 days.
• On Google Cloud, snapshots storage costs are $0.05/GB per month, snapshots are incremental which means each snapshot contains only the data that changed, unused disk space does not count toward the snapshot size, and you can configure the number of days snapshots are retained (including unlimited retention).

For example, to enable 7 days of backups for the above server with a 200 GB disk:

• The additional cost on DigitalOcean would be $81.60/month.
• The additional cost on Google Cloud would be less than $3/month.

For additional pricing details, see the Google Cloud guide and DigitalOcean guide.

Price calculation notes

• Prices do not include data transfer. Outbound traffic costs on Google Cloud are low but can add up if you are serving huge amounts of media such as videos. DigitalOcean includes a healthy amount of outbound traffic on their plans but overage costs are very high if you exceed the limits.
• The Google Cloud prices are for the us-central1 region and include:
  • The automatic 30% Sustained Use Discount.
  • A static IP address.
  • An SSD-backed disk (type pd-balanced).
• Google Cloud snapshot storage costs calculated with the following assumptions:
  • The 200 GB disk is 80% full.
  • 5 GB of the disk’s data changes daily.

Features

Standard cloud providers like DigitalOcean have a small fraction of the features available from enterprise cloud providers like Google Cloud. However, some of the additional features of enterprise cloud providers result in a steeper learning curve for new users.

Under the hood, enterprise cloud providers use more advanced technology and infrastructure than standard cloud providers. These more advanced technologies are what make possible the very low costs for certain features that are expensive at standard cloud providers.

The table below shows a few examples of differences in features between DigitalOcean and Google Cloud.

Feature	Google Cloud	DigitalOcean
vCPUs and memory	Predefined configurations or custom configurations.	Only predefined configurations.
Disk size	Configurable independently of vCPUs and memory.	Not configurable independently of vCPUs and memory.
Disk IOPS	Allowed IOPS for a server’s disk based on disk type and size.	Allowed IOPS for a server’s disk not stated publicly.
Powered-off pricing	No cost for vCPUs and memory of servers that are powered off. Costs still accrue for disk and static IP address.	Full costs accrue for servers that are powered off.
Backups schedules	Hourly, daily, or weekly.	Daily or weekly.
Backups retention	Configurable to any number of days, including unlimited.	Retention not configurable.For daily backups, 7 days.For weekly backups, 4 weeks.
Backups redundancy	Backups are stored in multiple data centers.	Backups are stored in the same data center as the server.
Incremental snapshots	Snapshots are incremental.Storage cost based on changes from previous snapshot.	Snapshots are not incremental.Storage cost based on disk size.
Port 25 (SMTP)	Outbound port 25 is blocked. You can relay outbound mail.	Outbound port 25 is sometimes blocked. You can ask DigitalOcean to open port 25. Sent mail may be rejected or go to spam folders due to poor IP address reputation.
Available regions	N. America: 11S. America: 2Europe: 12Middle East: 3Asia Pacific: 11Africa: 1	N. America: 3S. America: 0Europe: 3Middle East: 0Asia Pacific: 3Africa: 0

Feature notes

• IOPS means input/output operations per second.
• DigitalOcean does not publish IOPS limits for a server’s disk. DigitalOcean’s published IOPS limits are for network-attached block storage that can’t be used as a server’s boot disk and require an additional paid service for automated backups.

How to choose a cloud provider

If you’re unsure of which cloud provider to use, answer the following questions.

• Are your technical skills either moderate or high?
• Will learning cloud technologies advance your career?
• Do you expect to spend more than $200/month on cloud servers?

If you answered “yes” to one or more of the above questions, an enterprise cloud provider such as Google Cloud will likely be a better choice than a standard cloud provider like DigitalOcean.