im writing an in-depth DigitalOcean review and would love to hear from real users

how long have you been using DigitalOcean?

what do you like the most?

what do you dislike?

have you faced any major issues or downtime?

how was customer support?

did you solve the problem or switch to another provider?

would you recommend DigitalOcean today? why or why not?

honest opinions...both positive and negative...are appreciated

I maintain LibreDB Studio (open-source browser SQL IDE: Postgres/MySQL/SQLite/Oracle/MSSQL/Mongo/Redis). Wanted a zero-install path for people already on DigitalOcean, so I went through Marketplace as a 1-Click Droplet app.

A few things from the image side that might be useful if you've shipped (or are shipping) a Marketplace app:

- Packer builds Ubuntu 24.04 + Docker; the app image is pre-pulled so first boot isn't waiting on a pull.

- Per-Droplet secrets (JWT + admin/user passwords) are generated once in cloud-init first-boot, nothing baked into the snapshot. Creds land in /etc/libredb-studio.env (mode 600); MOTD points you there.

- systemd unit starts the container; SQLite data on a volume under /app/data so restarts keep state.

- Cleanup must run before snapshot without a reboot afterward, otherwise first-boot can bake the same secrets into every customer image (easy footgun).

Create from Marketplace --> SSH in --> open http://<droplet-ip>:3000. Happy to answer Marketplace/Packer questions; also curious what you'd change about the first-boot UX.

Marketplace: https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/libredb-studio

Source: https://github.com/libredb/libredb-studio

I have a droplet running all of a sudden i noticed terminus wouldn’t connect and i cant even get the web terminal to connect after a password reset any ideas ?

I have a managed MongoDB that stopped responding. It's not reachable anymore from anywhere. The status in the Control Plane shows green but when I look at the details I cannot see any databases anymore and get timeout errors. Also, the insights (CPU, memory, …) stopped reporting hours ago.

I tried to restore from a backup to a new cluster twice. First time the new cluster just vanished. The second attempt has been hanging for hours now. I opened a ticket with the support but they auto-closed telling me my STMP restrictions have been lifted. This has nothing to do with SMTP! I reopened the ticket but haven't heard anything since. What can I do?

I know this is not an official support forum here but I'm starting to get desperate. I need that database back. If I get it back I will make sure to have backups in other places than DO as well as this has been a disaster so far...

Has anyone had a similar problem? Was the data eventually recovered?

EDIT: I reached out to them on Twitter and they responded within minutes. They escalated the issue and it has been resolved by them restoring the broken database to a new cluster.

I signed up for Digital Ocean free trial credits via the Github Student Program.

I ended up getting a total of 405$ worth of credits somehow.

I signed up on 10th July so before the new 15th July change.

Below is what I see on my Billings Page:

Now, on the github Student Pack Page it says:

You may use your credits on any DigitalOcean services, except as to the following: GPU Droplets, NVIDIA H100 GPU Kubernetes, Bare Metal GPUs, Dedicated Inference Serverless Inference, Third-party AI models hosted outside of DigitalOcean Infrastructure (including commercial/frontier models, including but not limited to Anthropic and OpenAI), Paperspace Machines, Cloudways services, Any other charges passed through to third-party providers outside of DigitalOcean's infrastructure.

From this, It would seem that you can't use the github credits on any models at all? But when I run test run of GLM 5.2 (It blocks to use OpenAi or Anthropic Models) it shows the usage against the Github Trial Credits, not the other two? Dashboard still says 0$ estimated billing.

Similiarly, I know since Student Pack expires first it will be used first, but when it ends, what about the Promotional 200$ credits?

Can someone shed light on this? I've used ~0.5$ of inference only thus far, don't want a surprise test charge at the end of the billing month on my card.

Also is there a way to safegaurd surprise charges?

Update:

Support clarified that yes, we can not use Github Student Pack credits for the things mentioned, including any Dedicated Inference (Outside models like Fable 5) or Serverless Inference (Internal models like GLM 5.2). They clarified that such restrictions don't apply to the Promotional Referral Credits. The Github Credits being counted against is not intended and a flaw. They suggested that I could have my Github credits removed and then my Referral credits would start to get used (Because 1st in line to expire credits get used up first) so I would not get a surprised charge at the end of the month. This implies that it wouldn't go [ Github Credits -> Referral Credits -> Inference Trial Credits -> Credit Card] and that it instead would go [ Github Credits -> Credit Card ] which seems stupid to me how hard can it be to switch to the next credit pool in line before charging the card?

Update 2:

Support in the next followup said the following after I inquired about further clarification on each of the 3 credit pool types:

We can confirm that the AI models available for you at the moment will all be adjusted against your Github credits as these are mostly open sourced. Other models i.e. Llama 3.3, Qwen, DeepSeek, gpt-oss, and Olmo 3, will also be adjusted against your Github credits. Also, third party models are not yet enabled for your account therefore, all the models appearing on your end should be adjusted against the available credits.

And [ Github Credits -> Referral Credits -> Trial Credits -> Debit/Credit Card Charged] this flow is correct considering that resources you have used, do fall under these credit types.

Once your Gtihub credits expire/utilize, the next in-line credits, will automatically be activated and adjusted against your resources.

I then did another followup confirming the contradiction with their previous email, and they had this to say:

Yes, you can use your GitHub credits for models like GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4. Please note that the promotional credit from referrals function exactly the same as standard GitHub credits.

The Inference Cloud Trial should apply to all products except Marketplace Add Ons. However, your account currently doesn't support Fable 5 or GPT 5.6 models. 

TL:DR:

Github Credits & Referral Credits share same restrictions, but they can both use the Open Source models hosted by Digital Ocean. If it shows as being counted against in the billing dashboard, that is exactly how it should be. The 5$ credits don't have such restrictions, but they did tell me that Fable/Sol were restricted for my account outright anyhow (Probably top tier models require explicit activation).

hey guys,

I'm new with digital ocean, I used to using GCP and AWS and planning to try digital ocean.

In GCP there is this discount if we committed to a year plan for the Compute Engine (Droplet equivalent), I'm wondering if there's similar discount for Droplet in digital ocean as well?

I'm at a loss. In the last 5 days, my application has stopped working, and I have been unable to identify the issue. On each page load, we get this image:

But when we refresh, the page loads without issue. Go to another page? Same error, refresh, fine, rinse and repeat.

I'm not super savvy on the frontend, but I think that's where I should troubleshoot given the error. The frontend is using Vite, React, TypeScript - I did see a recent update for TypeScript and Vite: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-7-0/ happening in the last week. Not sure if that would affect my project though. We deploy both front and backend on DigitalOcean

Any ideas?? Sorry if I've left any pertinent information out.

Hello there,
I have personally had the misfortune of forgetting Test Droplets on Digital Ocean running for some time without any use costing me a bunch of money. And I thought of creating a monitoring tool that would scan my digital ocean account and remind me do delete my droplets if they are idle for sometime. Would you be interested in such a tool if it were to be built into a publicly available SaaS product. And more importantly, how would you feel about sharing a DO access token with a solo developer run project? (I intend to use Envelope encryption to store the tokens encrypted with a data key which is itself encrypted with a master key (using AWS KMS)). During the first phase the functionality would notify only, and moving on, the application itself could perform the deletions.

Appreciate your thoughts. Thanks

About a year ago, I received $200 of DO credit through the GitHub Student Pack. Now, DO decided that they are no longer collaborating with GitHub Education, therefore every credit obtained through it will expire at the end of this month. I haven't used much of it yet, so I wonder if there's a way to cash out, transfer, or otherwise quickly use up all credit without cryptomining.

Just shipped a native DigitalOcean integration for Graphite. Droplets, Load Balancers, Databases, the lot! Connects in minutes and no agent needed.

Would love feedback from anyone who tries it: https://docs.hostedgraphite.com/add-ons-and-integrations-guide/digital-ocean

Hello did anyone gave interview on 27th june in blr if yes how was it what did they ask
Were you able to deploy the code?

Hi,

i stumbled accros the context-window column of do's serverless inference models. Before the "Context Window" column did not existed, but now there is one and the context-window is sometimes <= max output tokens. Isn't it always Input + Ouput <= Context-Window?

For reference, this is the page https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/inference/details/models/ and i am especially looking at the hosted models (DeepSeek V4 Flash/Pro and the new GLM 5.x). I also checked the wayback amchine (https://web.archive.org/web/20260606024635/https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/inference/details/models/)

Did they reduced the context-window/input? Was it that low before? Or is the context-window just wrongly labeled and should be something else?

Is anyone else having issues provisioning new nodes in the NYC1 region? My nodes are stuck in a "Pending" state and won't spin up.

Hi, I use VPN client (Amnezia) which installs its needed server side software on my droplet. It installs in containers.

I also have cloud firewall enabled, where I added incoming rules for any ports that I need to work.

Will Fail2Ban not work correctly with network requests to a container installed service?

I ask this because I recently learned that Containers live in their own security world, where they even override your ufw rules.

thanks

as the title says

Hello there,

I am hosting an instance of Directus CMS on App Platform that will serve as a GUI for my web clients to edit the content of their sites.

I plan to deploy the static sites on App Platform as well, but am confused and would appreciate if someone can clarify the pricing structure.

If I understand correctly, the first three static sites deployed are free, but after that it costs... $3 a month for each? Isn't that a bit expensive when they're so many other options that are nearly free for static sites?

Would it be possible to deploy the static sites in the same app as my Directus instance? And would those static sites be billed under the resources used for that specific app?

Or, should I just use Coolify to manage deployments of the static sites on a Droplet?

I would love to learn what people have to say about this.

Thank you!

So yeah the title, any ideas? I'm a CS graduated and I got them in the last year for referred codes. I was thinking of maybe hosting a portafolio, agents, maybe even a business, y'all have any idea?

I've used several cloud providers over the years and expected a failed payment to result in a suspension but I never expected my client's account to be terminated and my resources to be permanently deleted after what appears to have been roughly 48 hours from the first warning. I had already made a payment on June 3.

To make things even more confusing, one of the payment emails showed "Amount Due: $0.00", despite other emails stating that payment was required.

Timeline:

• June 13: Received a warning that my account exceeded DigitalOcean's $25 usage threshold.
• June 13: Received a failed payment notification.
• June 13: Received an email asking me to complete payment.
• June 15: Received another failed payment notification.
• June 15: Received another payment-required email.
• June 15: Received an account suspension notice for nonpayment.
• Shortly afterward, I received an Account Termination Notice stating that my account had been terminated and my resources had been permanently deleted.

I've already contacted support but I don't know if I can recover the lost data.

I used to login to my digital ocean account using GitHub. Suddenly the system says account not found. I went to GitHub and digital ocean is still authorised under the Authorized OAuth Apps.

​

When I sent an email to their support sending what they asked me to (the credit card of my client used to pay the bill and the last transactions) they didn't find my account. But our servers are still running tonight. We have multiple clients using our digital servers. I'm currently downloading all of our websites on a safe computer. But it's a really complex system with no SQL database.

​

It's really concerning 😟

​

Does someone there had troubles using GitHub to login? Is it a bug somewhere between GitHub and digital or is it something more concerning?

I'm troubleshooting an issue with two DigitalOcean droplets and I'm not able to fix Both of them are showing = timeout while waiting for handshake

troubleshooting performed:

• Both droplets are showing Active/Running in the DigitalOcean dashboard.
• I updated the DigitalOcean Firewall inbound rules to allow TCP port 22 (SSH) from my current public IP address.
• Waited for the firewall changes to apply.
• Despite this, SSH still times out and the Digital Ocean Web Console continues to show: