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Comment by XCSme | Hacker News Reader

I use a $5/mo DigitalOcean VPS droplet instead of AWS or other "cloud" service. I only have to host an analytics dashboard ( https://usertrack.net/ ), I don't need scaling and this way I know exactly how much I will pay. The resources are more than enough for my needs and I don't think it could be much cheaper even on the most optimized pay-per-minute of use cloud platforms.

I also have some other APIs hosted in the same way (eg. website thumbnail generation API), for the very low traffic I have and no chance of getting burst traffic I think the use case of a VPS or dedicated server is perfect.

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Whenever I need to host something small and I’m trying to decide between DO and AWS I always ask myself. Would I rather be surprised by the bill or my website crashing from too much traffic? I almost always pick DO because I don’t want to mess something up and lose a few hundred dollars.

Wholeheartedly agree. I think AWS is moving in the right direction with Lightsail[0], which is a service very similar to DO droplets and includes transfer. Nice if you want to use AWS for like one or two other services, but I tend to still go with DO for small things.

[0]: https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/

That sounds interesting. By "moving in the right direction" do you mean that it's still in beta or not released yet? Or that it's just the first step of many to come?

Lightsail works well now. It's a little over three years old. In the first year or so after it was released, they were notorious for being slow in most regards compared to their peers (it launched using rebranded instances from AWS, and used spinning disks, going up against SSDs their competitors were all using). They've largely caught up on performance with DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr and similar.

That said, I've stuck with DigitalOcean even though Lightsail tests fine. I've had a great experience over the years with DO and see no reason to leave.

I use DO now because I like their interface and that they keep adding new features. Plus in my case I can easily spin-up new servers with their prebuilt images marketplace and cloud-init support. I tried using AWS before, but last time I did their interface was awful and pricing hard to understand/predict.

off topic: do you really track the users mouse movements and personal data (IP & such) on your side without asking for permission? Kinda strange these days, isn't it?

I want to start by saying that that is my own analytics platform.

> personal data (IP & such) I agree, Still storing IP is a bit strange. I am still working on the privacy policy and option to not store IP at all. All tracking is session-based (no cookie), and no personal information is stored (only the IP, which is currently only partially displayed, and which is AFAIK not considered personal information).

> track the users mouse movements The site has no inputs, so it only tracks the mouse movements/scroll. Do you consider this to be a privacy concern, especially if the visit is anonymized (can not be linked to yourself as a person)? Seeing a replay of the visit is really useful for understanding what visitors do on the site and how to make their experience better.

> Kinda strange these days, isn't it? I agree, but I still think it's a lot better than other platforms, it complies with GDPR regulations, no cookies involved, no data is sent to third parties, no personal information is being stored (only the previously mentioned IP). I am also continously improving it and adding more privacy-focused features.

I like DigitalOcean... but they are a cloud service too.

I think the terminology is confusing. If I quote Wikipedia, which should never be done: "Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user".

I personally refer to servers as "cloud" only if they have auto-scaling and usually to services such as AWS or GCP instead of VPSs such as DO, Linode, Vultr, etc.

Now that we're in the habit of quoting Wikipedia... "DigitalOcean provides developers cloud services that help to deploy and scale applications that run simultaneously on multiple computers."

Most people I talk to or see online discussing their Digital Ocean usage just use their VPS.

Yes they offer managed databases and kubernetes, but these are newer offerings. I of course don't know how well used they are, but I never see or hear anybody talking about them.

I use them for all my stuff when I'm not on company time, and the reason is because I can just be like "spin me up a Debian box," which I cannot easily do on the things folks typically describe as cloud providers.

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