So, you’ve created your online startup’s business plan, finished the final product, and you’re now ready to release it. Your web application or online game is finally ready to be deployed to production for the world to see. Or perhaps you’ve planned to build an online shop using OpenCart, or a WordPress blog. Whatever the nature of the online service or product you plan on releasing, you now need to choose a VPS provider to host your online product or service, and you’re wondering which is better, DigitalOcean or SSD Nodes?
This DigitalOcean vs. SSD Nodes article has the answer for you!
Notes and Similarities
Both DigitalOcean and SSD Nodes use SSD storage, a KVM hypervisor, and offer full root access. The plans we will compare are for unmanaged servers, which means that you are responsible for maintaining your server. Each plan also uses shared resources, which means that your server shares the underlying physical hardware with other servers.
Note that DigitalOcean calls their VPS a “droplet”.
We’ll compare the standard VPS option from each provider. At SSD Nodes, it’s the Standard VPS, while DigitalOcean calls theirs a Standard Droplet.
Comparing The Available Linux Distributions
Both DigitalOcean and SSD Nodes offer Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and CentOS. However, SSD Nodes offers the relatively new AlmaLinux distribution, while DigitalOcean does not. AlmaLinux is a production-grade enterprise operating system that is binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It was initially released on March 2021 by CloudLinux to provide a community-supported spiritual successor to CentOS Linux.
If AlmaLinux sounds like your cup of tea, then going with SSD Nodes is your only option for now.
Comparing Standard VPS Plans with 8GB of RAM
Next in our SDD Nodes vs. DigitalOcean comparison, we’ll compare the prices of the standard 8GB RAM VPS plans, which are a good start for deploying applications and running several services at once for low traffic and low resource applications.
Let’s take a look at what each provider offers in the 8GB RAM option:
| 8GB RAM plans | DigitalOcean | SSD Nodes |
|---|---|---|
| RAM | 8GB | 8GB |
| CPU | 4vCPUs | 2vCPUs |
| Disk | 160GB | 160GB |
| Transfer | 5TB | 4TB |
| 1-Month Price | $48 | $19 |
| 1-Year Price | $576 | $77 |
| 3-Year Price | $1728 | $183 |
Here, SSD Nodes offers less CPU and slightly less transfer allowance. But the SSD Nodes monthly price for less than a year of usage is 60% less than the DigitalOcean price, and the 1-year plan is 87% less than a year with DigitalOcean, while the 3-year SSD Nodes plan is 90% less. In 3 years, you’ll save $1545 with the SSD Nodes plan, and you’ll save $3090 in 6 years!
Comparing Standard VPS Plans with 16GB of RAM
Your startup or online service is not going to last for just a few years, and having a long-term vision, you will likely grow out of the 8GB RAM plan, and you’ll need to move onto the 16GB plan in less time than you might expect. Or perhaps you already need more than what the 8GB plan offers, in which case this section will further give you more information to make your decision.
We will now compare the 16GB RAM plans of DigitalOcean and SSD Nodes. Let’s take a look at what each provider offers in the 16GB RAM option:
| 16GB RAM plans | DigitalOcean | SSD Nodes |
|---|---|---|
| RAM | 16GB | 16GB |
| CPU | 8vCPUs | 4vCPUs |
| Disk | 320GB | 320GB |
| Transfer | 6TB | 8TB |
| 1-Month Price | $96 | $23 |
| 1-Year Price | $1152 | $94 |
| 3-Year Price | $3456 | $222 |
Here, SSD Nodes offers less CPU, but they compensate for that by offering an additional 2TB of transfer allowance. The SSD Nodes monthly price for less than a year of usage is 76% less than the DigitalOcean price, and the 1-year plan is 92% less than what you’d spend for a year with DigitalOcean, while the 3-year SSD Nodes plan is 94% less.
In 3 years, the monthly price of the 16GB RAM plan is $96 with DigitalOcean, and $6.1 with SSD Nodes, which means that you save about $90 a month with SSD Nodes.
In total, you’ll save $3234 with the 3-year SSD Nodes plan, and $6468 in 6 years!
Comparing Resources Per Dollar in The 16GB RAM Plans
For more comparison data, let’s take a look at each provider and see how much resources they offer per dollar per month with the 16GB RAM plans during 3 years:
| 16GB RAM plans | DigitalOcean | SSD Nodes |
|---|---|---|
| RAM/dollar (MB) | 170 MB/$ | 2,685 MB/$ |
| Disk/dollar (GB) | 3.3 GB/$ | 52GB |
| Transfer/dollar (GB) | 64 GB/$ | 1,342 GB/$ |
As you can see, the difference between the resources values per dollar of SSD Nodes compared to DigitalOcean is staggering, to say the least.
Understanding RAM
RAM (Random Access Memory) is one of the most important factors that determine the overall performance of your VPS. It temporarily stores data and allows you to quickly access and process it.
The amount of RAM your VPS has affects the time it takes to compute operations such as rendering a page, or calculating various values in your web services. More RAM means more applications and software services you can run concurrently, and more users you can serve faster, which will make your sites perform better. Insufficient RAM may cause your web services to slow or go down in case you receive large amounts of traffic.
As a general rule, it is better to purchase more RAM than you think you might need, to be on the safe side rather than the sorry side.
DigitalOcean gives you 170 MB of RAM per dollar, while SSD Nodes offers 2,685 MB per dollar, which is more than 15x more RAM for every dollar!
Understanding Storage
The amount of storage you’ll need depends on the nature of your web services, you might only need a few dozen Gigabytes to store small blog posts and images, a few hundred Gigabytes for critical full server backups with large data sets, or hundreds of Terabytes for complex and large data sets for your army of data scientists to play with and optimize your business profits. However, for most cases, 320 GB of disk space should be enough.
DigitalOcean offers 3.3 GB of disk space per dollar, while SSD Nodes offers a whopping 52 GB per dollar, which again means more than 15x more disk space for every dollar.
Understanding Transfer
Transfer, commonly known as “bandwidth”, is the amount of data that’s transferred in and out of your VPS in a month, and the amount of transfer you’ll need, like everything else, also depends on the nature of your web service. A static landing page won’t need nearly as much transfer allowance as a video streaming website, because text and static images are nowhere near high-quality videos in terms of file size. For most cases, 8 TB of transfer allowance is more than enough.
DigitalOcean offers 64 GB of transfer allowance per dollar, while SSD Nodes offers a monstrous 1,342 GB per dollar, which is more than 20x more bandwidth for every dollar.
Comparing the 1-Click Apps Feature
1-Click Apps is a feature that allows you to automate the installation of popular open-source applications, servers, and other software, such as WordPress, phpMyAdmin, the LAMP software bundle, etc. Installing a 1-Click application handles all the necessary technical hard work for you, such as setting up systems, databases, web servers, scripts, configurations, and so on. With the 1-Click Apps feature, you can install an application and get it ready to be deployed in less than 5 minutes!
DigitalOcean has a marketplace with 200+ 1-Click apps, while SSDNodes offers only 8 1-Click apps. This gives DigitalOcean a great advantage in this comparison.
For tech-savvy users, 1-Click Apps don’t add much value other than saving a few hours, and for the price difference, you may not see that the DigitalOcean 1-Click Apps feature is worth it. On the other hand, you may not be able to follow the needed technical instructions for setting up a complex cloud application for which DigitalOcean offers a 1-Click App option, or you may simply prefer saving time, in which case you have a strong reason to choose DigitalOcean over SSD Nodes because of their feature-rich 1-Click Apps marketplace. However, to save money in the long term, you can always hire someone to install your desired application for you on your SSD Nodes server.
Conclusion
You now have a good idea of the differences between the standard VPS plans that DigitalOcean and SSD Nodes offer. While DigitalOcean offers a great number of 1-Click apps, when it comes to the price, you can see that SSD Nodes is far more cost-effective in the medium to long-term.