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DigitalOcean vs Google Firebase comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.1
Users generally found DigitalOcean cost-effective, noticing initial savings, though some lacked details to quantify exact financial impact.
Sentiment score
6.7
Google Firebase is cost-effective for large apps, with valuable features and manageable for small teams, despite some expenses.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
DigitalOcean's customer service is responsive yet inconsistent, needing improved technical support and quicker resolutions compared to AWS.
Sentiment score
7.1
Users rarely need support due to excellent documentation and community resources, but views on direct support vary.
DigitalOcean support is rated lower than AWS's because we encounter issues more frequently.
I do not currently find any other competitors that match its offering.
If the community doesn't have the answers, then I contact the Google Firebase team directly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
DigitalOcean is highly rated for scalability, offering tools to manage increased loads and easily add resources like RAM or CPUs.
Sentiment score
6.8
Firebase is scalable and flexible, though some users face challenges with pricing and configuration as usage increases.
I have not tried vertical scaling yet, but from the documentation, it seems very easy to scale the system.
It can handle all tiers of the market effectively.
Google also has some other cloud services, but when we compare Google Firebase, it is not as scalable.
I would rate the scalability of Google Firebase as eight because I miss some features from MS SQL, particularly the SQL functions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
DigitalOcean offers reliable stability, though some users note occasional downtimes and performance fluctuations based on extended use.
Sentiment score
8.0
Google Firebase is praised for its stability and reliability, with minor concerns about downtime and performance by some users.
DigitalOcean is quite stable, and I would rate its stability at nine out of ten.
It is approximately 50 to 60% stable, reaching 60 to 70% depending on usage levels.
In our company, we have prototypes on Google Firebase and productions on AWS Cloud.
 

Room For Improvement

DigitalOcean struggles with performance, customer dissatisfaction, and service issues, prompting calls for improved features and better support.
Users want improved control, logging, queries, pricing, support, interface, documentation, and integration for better Cloud Function performance.
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 lack of a proper service provider model ultimately led us to cease operations with DigitalOcean.
There are issues where even with 8 GB RAM, the performance doesn't meet expectations.
Automation testing with mobile devices could be improved, especially in regression testing to ensure that new feature launches do not affect other features.
Since Google Firebase is a NoSQL platform, areas for improvement include enhancing query functionalities to be more equivalent to SQL, like MS SQL.
 

Setup Cost

DigitalOcean's pricing ranges from $5 to $50 monthly, with costs depending on configuration and perceived as competitive by some.
Google Firebase offers a free tier and scalable pricing, but users should carefully manage costs due to potential fluctuations.
DigitalOcean offers affordable pricing, especially for startups.
They could have implemented credits based on usage so that users would be able to easily calculate the pricing and provide it to customers.
Google Firebase offers a reasonable pricing structure.
 

Valuable Features

DigitalOcean provides reliable, cost-effective servers with an intuitive interface, database management, flexible hosting, and easy installation.
Firebase excels with real-time database, authentication, cloud functions, push notifications, and scalability, ideal for rapid app development.
The droplet feature is valuable for hosting my applications as it is particularly cost-effective and serves my needs well.
The most significant aspect is that we can connect directly to the system from anywhere.
The team was particularly satisfied with the flexibility of the service and the rules for managing virtual machines on DigitalOcean.
It allows for pre-launch testing without publishing it on Google Play right away.
What I appreciate most about Google Firebase is the speed, accuracy, and security it offers.
Serverless cloud functions.
 

Categories and Ranking

DigitalOcean
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Firebase
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 4.4%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Michael Olayemi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mehmet Batuhan Ülper - PeerSpot reviewer
Crash insights empower user analytics and highlight potential for session replay integration
We use Firebase for understanding crashes and tracking analytics about our users, which supports marketing, development, and distribution purposes Firebase has been helpful in providing analytics and crash insights. It still needs more detail for larger scale applications. Crashlytics is the…
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DigitalOcean?
It's been a good choice for us for some services. We generally have several deployments. For instance, for some static Angular applications, it was a clear choice to run them on Cloudflare, which p...
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...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
What do you like most about Google Firebase?
Google Analytics for Firebase is the best feature of the solution.
 

Also Known As

Digital Ocean
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

jQuery Foundation, Pertino, TaskRabbit, Compose, InfluxDB, The Able Few
Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about DigitalOcean vs. Google Firebase and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.