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Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

I am a mechanical engineer who dabbles in web development from time to time. I am forever indebted to DigitalOcean for creating a super easy platform for someone who has no clue about VPS starting out. I know how to operate a linux machine but not the slightest idea about how to host a website myself until I came across DigitalOcean and their LAMP/LEMP tutorials.

Once I was comfortable with DigitalOcean, I tried launching a VPS on AWS and holycrap it was so insanely complicated. Within 10 mins of creating an AWS account, I was out. I understand that there is nothing wrong with AWS - it is not for me, but DigitalOcean has fullfilled my needs in the most perfect way with a huge knowledge base and detailed tutorials.

DigitalOcean is absolutely incredible.

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Hi! I'm a member of the Community team at DigitalOcean. I wanted to thank you for your kind words about our tutorials. This kind of feedback means a lot to us. We're glad we could help you get your web site set up.

Just want to add on to this. Whenever I'm looking up a piece of software and I find a Digital Ocean tutorial on it, I know I'm in good hands.

Have yet to find a tutorial that wasn't great!

Amen. DO gets it when it comes to docs.

Chiming in as well. You guys do solid work, and have untangled me more often than I can count.

Your guides and tutorials are at the same level as stackoverflow for figuring out problems

How do I fix this: stackoverflow first hit

How do I do this: if DO isn’t first hit already I scroll down to yours

The Django -> Ubuntu tutorials are amazing. Thank you.

Thanks for the tutorials and for keeping them up to date. I’m probably not their target audience for the most part, but when I need to do something in an unfamiliar stack, [stack name] + digitalocean is usually my first search. Wish you guys had a little more of a professional oriented products (think AWS/GCP) and no ‘max 10 servers’ kind of rules so I could use it.

> no ‘max 10 servers’ kind of rules

You can contact their Support to get that increased. Just guessing at the reason, but if there was no limit, what happens if someone hacks your account and spins up a 100,000 node cryptocurrency mining farm?

The same thing applies to AWS, and AWS doesn't have '10 servers maximum' limit.

Beyond anything, it tells people about their target audience, which is indie development. That's fine, and it's a great market to be in. But in the case I have to spin up 17 servers in 24 hours in three continents, I can't really afford to deal with DigitalOcean's support under that kind of stress. This doesn't happen often, but when it happens, it absolutely breaks you.

AWS also has a initial soft limit on EC2 instances. I dont remember what it is but its <100

Yeah, I’m sure they have — It’s just that AWS’ limits are a lot more compatible with a startup (vs an indie developer) than DigitalOcean’s.

FWIW, I find AWS limits confusing and seemingly random. Also, the fact that you can't limit total spending is _very_ unfriendly to (at least indie, as you point out) developers. I have no experience with DO though, maybe that will change with this offering.

Have you actually dealt with their support though? Your example of going from (seemingly) zero servers to 17 across 3 continents in 24 hours (indicating unforeseen absolutely incredible traction and growth) seems significantly less likely than getting a response from their support team increasing usage limits within the same timeframe.

AWS most definitely has service limits that apply to all products including ec2 for this exact (and other abusive) reasons. In fact, the aws limits are even more convoluted and can hit at random if not tracked. More details here: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_many_instances_can_I_ru...

Yeah, as I was building out some apps over the past year it was a game of ‘which account limit will I hit next’. Most of them require a support ticket to be raised, and justification.

Hey Rolleiflex - Thanks so much for being a DigitalOcean customer! We would be happy to increase your Droplet limit if you get in touch. Just visit the support link from your Cloud control panel to make the request or drop me a line directly (first name @).

Thanks! Zach Director of Support, DigitalOcean

Hey Zach, thanks for chiming in. I’ve moved on from DO to AWS a long time ago, but I appreciate the sentiment.

May be they should allow customer to set higher default limit instead of 10? Which is silly.

( I never knew there was such a low limit of 10 instances. )

For what it's worth, my account has a limit of 25 and I've never requested an increase. So I guess after some period of use and payment they trust you and increase your limit automatically?

I've been a DO customer for 5 years but I'm not sure when my droplet limit was increased.

I thought the limit was for your protection and you can get it increased just by contacting them?

I preemptively contacted Support to verify my bona fides - I think my cap now (self-requested) is something like 50 or so

Got a personal Nextcloud instance going with DO and your documentation has been an amazing help.

Hats off to you and the rest of the team.

Seriously though, your tutorials are probably the reason most people I know have used DO. You guys do an amazing job with those!

As a Linux SysAdmin I love coming across a tutorial from DigitalOcean when Im searching for a howto because I can always be sure that they will be updated, well written and very complete. A big thank you to you and the rest of the team!

I've run across DigitalOcean tutorials that helped me out many times. You all do great work, thanks.

Your tutorials are simple and down to the point, just the way they should be. I became a customer thanks to the tutorials, and I haven't looked back.

Always come back to DO for the concisely written tutorials. Thumbs up for the good work.

I'm a customer, but half the time I'm using your tutorials it's for home projects not my VPS.

Really great job!

Keep up the good work!

Thank you. The tutorials have been very valuable over the years.

> DigitalOcean has fullfilled my needs in the most perfect way with a huge knowledge base and detailed tutorials.

Agreed. The while I liked the price point and the UI, the tutorials were leagues ahead of everything else.

I'm glad I'm not the only software engineer that can't figure out how to use AWS.

So far, DigitalOcean does everything that I need. I hope they can maintain this great developer experience.

AWS is much more structured to treat infrastructure like cattle rather than pets. DO blends the line a bit, but in spinning up a ‘droplet’ you’re leaning more on the ‘pet’ type of thinking. I’m super bullish on DO - they have the API to act like AWS (to a degree) but the UI to support small/individual teams.

For my day job we use Azure, and it gets the job done. But all my personal projects are with Digital Ocean I love how clean and minimal everything is.

I bounced around hosting providers for years until I landed on DO. I have nothing but good things to say about them.

Agreed. DO's knowledge base changed the game for me. I went from never getting anything to work out when trying to build projects to having a plethora of tutorials on a wide range of topics that seem to always work out. DO's server service is awesome as well, but man I'm really really thankful for all their tutorials!

Aws can be complicated that's why we have a we use terraform to spin up our infrastructure and link it all together.

Hey there! I'm from DigitalOcean and wanted to thank you for sharing your experience around using our platform and community. I loved reading your comment and shared it with our team, who in turn would like to show you some love. We'd love to hear from you at sammy[at]digitalocean.com!

I am also a fan and a customer, but did you notice how many times their tutorials appear in search results ? Their SEO game is strong! That's how they got me.

AWS used to be easy, but over the last decade it's become a specialization. Every time I wander back to it, there's another layer of complexity in the way towards doing something simple.

I agree. It seems like a deliberate strategy. Amazon is trying to create a breed of highly paid AWS experts who will be keenly interested in promoting AWS, because their valued knowledge is provider-specific and not transferable. Similar to how Microsoft created all those MCPs who tried to push Microsoft tech everywhere regardless of how well it fit the task.

It's mostly just the natural evolution of catering to their #1 entity - large corps.

I don't think they care about the long tail.

The 'specialization' may just be an advantage, maybe not.

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