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Alibaba Cloud vs DigitalOcean comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
10th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DigitalOcean
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.2%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alibaba Cloud5.2%
DigitalOcean2.3%
Other92.5%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Michael Olayemi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Checkit
Enjoy cost-effective hosting with flexible deployment and room for payment model improvement
I use only one feature, which is the droplet, and it has been satisfactory. The droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well. I also have total freedom over what I use, and I have a better user interface and documentation compared to Oracle.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"Otherwise, the cost of Alibaba Cloud is reasonable, and service-wise, it's also good because it has many available services worth trying."
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."
"The installation is easy."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud, and Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"We use the solution to run VMs."
"DigitalOcean is much cheaper compared to Oracle, Amazon, and Google, making it a better option for a startup."
"The team was particularly satisfied with the flexibility of the service and the rules for managing virtual machines on DigitalOcean."
"The managed database service is what I really like as it really simplifies the setup of a database infrastructure."
"The droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well."
"The solution is very stable."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can create a phishing server and use it."
"The most outstanding aspect of DigitalOcean is its user interface and ease of use. Compared to more complex solutions, such as AWS, DigitalOcean's platform is highly intuitive and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"I wouldn't recommend Alibaba. I think other companies should just use Azure instead, as it's a much simpler solution."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"The lack of a proper service provider model ultimately led us to cease operations with DigitalOcean."
"I would like to see an automation feature added to send emails out using the open-source solution."
"There are disadvantages, such as machines getting stuck or disconnected, requiring restarts."
"The deployment time can be improved in DigitalOcean. While deployment is automated, the process can take a minute and a half to five minutes, and for more complex applications, this time increases even further. This is not optimal for applications that receive frequent updates."
"DigitalOcean could offer a pay-as-you-go model similar to AWS, where I would pay for what I use rather than having fixed payments."
"The solution could improve by having integration with GitHub."
"We found the solution to be a bit expensive."
"I think the support can be improved, and I also think DigitalOcean needs to work on the reliability of the droplets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"The price of DigitalOcean could be lower. It is expensive. it's higher than other solutions available in the market. We pay approximately $20 to $25 a month to use the solution. The price we pay is for the shared CPU option."
"There is no licensing fee but there is a subscription cost based on how much RAM and storage you require."
"The program is cheaper than others."
"I would rate DigitalOcean's pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"I am using the cheapest option available, which costs $50 per month."
"The pricing is moderate and reasonable for a mid-tier cloud platform."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
Thanks for sharing these insights! I completely agree that Microsoft Azure provides IT administrators with strong centralized management, robust security controls through RBAC, and tools for cost o...
What needs improvement with DigitalOcean?
There are disadvantages, such as machines getting stuck or disconnected, requiring restarts. Sometimes we lose connection and need to check with the IT service provider from the DigitalOcean servic...
What is your primary use case for DigitalOcean?
We use DigitalOcean mostly for RDS services and cloud-related systems where we want to deploy codes and run them using nginx or other services where it is cheaper to use, and we use it to extract d...
What advice do you have for others considering DigitalOcean?
I am a lead developer, currently working in that role. We are a customer of DigitalOcean. They can reach me via email to confirm anything regarding my review. I am willing to be a reference for Dig...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Digital Ocean
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. DigitalOcean and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.