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Comment by jokergd | Hacker News Reader

Regarding DigitalOcean -- they would NOT frown on it

if you go over your usage, you are charged 0.02 cents per gigabyte over your limit

if you stay within your usage, nothing happens

(note, as of right now, there is no charges for overages. until your bandwidth transfer stats are available on the control panel, there will be no overage charges)

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My suspicion is they would shut you down, or encourage you to move to a larger droplet. As is referenced by glomph later in this thread, their TOU states "3.3 You shall not: (i) take any action that imposes or may impose (as determined by us in our sole discretion) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our (or our third party providers’) infrastructure;"

Consistently using excessive bandwidth likely falls in the "unreasonable or disproportionately large load " category. And, regardless, $5 for 1 Terabyte is only $0.005/gigabyte, which can only be offered, as long as people don't actually use 1 Terabyte of bandwidth The cheapest price Amazon offers (after discounts) is $0.08/gigabyte, after 150 terabytes which you've paid them $12,800 for.

In comparison, if we were to take Digital Ocean at Face Value, we could get that same 150 Terabytes for $150 * 5 or $750.

Do you truly believe that Digital Ocean is able to offer bandwidth at such a Discount to Amazon? Particularly when the price Schedule for Amazon in Singapore is graduated as follows:

   First 1 GB / month	$0.000 per GB
   Up to 10 TB / month	$0.120 per GB
   Next 40 TB / month	$0.085 per GB
   Next 100 TB / month	$0.082 per GB
   Next 350 TB / month	$0.080 per GB

You get a sense that their is a structural price floor around $0.08/GB that is hard for them to sell bandwidth for less.

The point I'm trying to make, and hopefully succeeding at, is DO and Amazon are in different business models. DO is profitable as long as the majority of their customers don't use the services intensively. Amazon, on the other hand, is profitable regardless of how much of their services you use - as a result, each of the companies incentives regarding account termination, and rate limiting, will likewise be aligned.

Please note, of course, that I'm saying this as a thoroughly satisfied Digital Ocean Customer. I've ceased using Amazon EC2 for pretty much everything, and have DO droplets all around the world. I love their service, and an am extraordinarily satisfied with both the performance and quality of their offering.

I work for DigitalOcean.

We would not shut you down.

Only gray situation is if you are flooding; amazon will send you a [bandwidth] bill, we send you a ticket

I have a DO VM that I use for a few hobby apps but mostly for a Tor relay. $10/mo plan. I've done my best to throttle the bandwidth usage within the plan bounds but can't say for sure whether or not I've been entirely successful at that. Nevertheless -> zero fuss from DO, nothing, not a single complaint or $.01 added to my bill. I don't think I (or the Tor user community) would have fared nearly was well with Amazon.

If you've ever bought bandwidth at a colo you know the AWS rates have extremely high margins. I'd wager that DO can afford it, it just eats at their margins.

0.02 cents and $0.02 are two different things. I was confused by your reply. See [1] for a very frustrating example where Verizon reps made the same mistake.

[1] http://verizonmath.blogspot.nl/2007/08/original-recording-of...

Bullshit. If you believe they don't oversell their VPSs you are living in a fantasy land.

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