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Ask HN: Alternatives to DigitalOcean?

22 points by pizza ↗ HN
Hi everyone, I got a DigitalOcean droplet the other day. Someone on here recommended them as a solid VPS that was pretty inexpensive, so I thought "Great! I'll sign up right away". The product is great, but I don't know if I like the management...

I had just finished setting up jekyll blog on my droplet, and was trying to transfer no more than 4 or 5 ordinary-size PNGs to my droplet (in retrospect I wouldn't be having this headache if I used something like scp, oh well..), so I just uploaded them to imgur as one-time images and used wget to download them onto my droplet.

I log into my DigitalOcean account today and find out that my account had been locked and my droplet shut down, and they ask me to verify my account. I give them the info they need and then I get a response asking me why I was running an out-bound DoS attack from their platform.

I wish it didn't sound as if I were trying to hide anything, but that's literally the extent of what I did... I guess its possible that something happened with my droplet after I last logged into it, but I highly doubt that...

I don't wanna deal with a service that acts like this... Anyone have any suggestions for alternatives? Preferably as cheap with the same features (I was using the smallest droplet) i.e. SSD filesystems and a simple, out-of-your-way feature-set with a static IP for $5/month.

Thanks for reading!

21 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 49.9 ms ] thread
uladzislau
I was unpleasantly surprised this week by two rather lengthy outages. Now considering Linode as an alternative.

I'm wondering what other DigitalOcean users have to say?

jpt
DO has always been fantastic for me.
rgacote
I have a few accounts at Digital Ocean -- no problem. But the bulk of my VPS hosting is at Linode. Few problems over the years -- and those were quickly addressed. Extremely happy with Linode performance.
jordsmi
Hasn't linode had multiple hacks, including one recently?

I'd stay away from them

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
l0gicpath
We've been dealing with Linode for well over 3 years now without any issues. Their support is great and their pricing is imho just about right.

We also tried Webbynode in their very early days, I just checked their website now and things seem to have greatly changed for them so that's another option.

I'm not so sure about your pricing requirements though, quite frankly I was a bit surprised when I first checked out DO, having such a low pricing point. So I don't believe you'd find another vps of the same quality with such pricing but you could always check at http://lowendbox.com/

Good luck.

tonteldoos
I've been using DO for about 6 months now, mainly as a OpenVPN server, and the odd bit of work from a tablet via a terminal. Since I usually use a tmux terminal, I can't say that I've seen downtime in that time.

If you're looking for possible alternatives though, these guys were posted here a while ago: http://cloudatcost.com/

I got one of the $35 VPSs (which are still available, it seems), and have done minimal playing with it, but seems to be ok.

erikj54
I had the same experience, but their customer experience was pretty great. I have yet to start up the Droplet again, since they threatened to shut down my service.
penguinlinux
Go with aws , they have a free tier service. You can easily get a cloud machine there in a mini instance. Plus you get to play with their web console or use their command line and interact with your instance from your linux machine or mac.
ricardobeat
I'm curious, did you request any more information on the detected attack pattern?
vldx
You can check RamNode.

(they have also permanent -40% promo codes, check google)

sdogruyol
This is their way of not taking any responsibility and blaming the customer. This also happened to many others including me. You can check these HN threads.

HN Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6447152 Blog Post: http://serdardogruyol.com/?p=137

chc
How is it their responsibility if your droplet is running a DOS attack?
[dead] brubaker
Apparently a lot of people have trouble locking down their server, then blame others when it becomes a problem.
motyar
I use Dropbox for sync. You can use btsync too.

Digitalocean is working great for me.

Pyramids
DigitalOcean has a solid platform for the price, and we've personally had great experiences with them, with only intermittent downtime when their SFO location first launched.

In terms of the suspension you're referring to, they're an automated detection as far as I'm aware, so it really sounds like there might of been something happening that you were unaware of.

Regarding alternatives in this price point, you aren't going to find many options. If you're willing to step up your budget slightly, CloudVPS[1] and TransIP[2] in the Netherlands have both been great for us, and are still quite affordable considering what they provide.

If you're really stuck within your current budget, you might want to look at EDIS[3], whom we run several Slave DNS/MX servers with. They're about on-par with DigitalOcean pricing and offerings, with a much larger choice of locations, including the US.

[1] http://www.cloudvps.com/

[2] https://www.transip.eu/

[3] http://www.edis.at/en/home/