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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)
9th
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 October 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.4%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DigitalOcean is 2.4%, 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 Cloud5.4%
DigitalOcean2.4%
Other92.2%
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

"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable; it's quite inexpensive and the solution is very secure."
"It is easy to set up."
"The installation is easy."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"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."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"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."
"The customer support team are very responsive."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"The Droplets feature is beneficial and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can create a phishing server and use it."
"Digital Ocean really hit the sweet spot."
"The solution is very stable."
"The technical support services are good."
 

Cons

"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature."
"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"It is not robust."
"Customer support has a lot of room for improvement. There's just general documentation, general customer support, and general maturity of the processes are all lacking when compared to Amazon or Google."
"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"I wouldn't recommend Alibaba. I think other companies should just use Azure instead, as it's a much simpler solution."
"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."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"There are disadvantages, such as machines getting stuck or disconnected, requiring restarts."
"The technical support for this solution could be improved."
"Backup/snapshots does not always restore properly."
"I think something needs to be done in terms of technical support."
"The platform could enhance its features, particularly for ETL processes. Additionally, more integration features would be highly beneficial."
"I think the support can be improved, and I also think DigitalOcean needs to work on the reliability of the droplets."
"The issue with DigitalOcean is primarily the latency. So, when you have a mixed system with some components staying here, and then we encounter network latency, it's not optimal. Our"
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"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."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"This is a pay as you go solution. There is no license and it is usage based."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing is cheap."
"There is no licensing fee but there is a subscription cost based on how much RAM and storage you require."
"The pricing is moderate and reasonable for a mid-tier cloud platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

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.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.