Digitalocean Cloud

A DigitalOcean Droplet is a Linux-based virtual machine (VM) that runs on top of virtualized hardware. Each Droplet is a new server you can use, either as a standalone server or as part of a larger cloud infrastructure. They are designed to be simple, scalable, and developer-friendly.

A Droplet is DigitalOcean's brand name for a virtual private server (VPS). Essentially, they are the same thing — a virtualized server that mimics a dedicated physical server with its own resources and dedicated operating system.

DigitalOcean Droplets are a form of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). You are provided with the virtualized hardware (computing, storage, networking) and are responsible for managing the OS, applications, and data.

You can choose from popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, and CoreOS, or use pre-configured 1-Click Apps for LAMP, Docker, WordPress, and more.

Yes, each Droplet comes with its own public IPv4 address. You can also assign Floating IPs to your Droplets for high availability.

All Droplets use high-performance Solid State Drives (SSDs) for fast disk I/O. For additional storage, you can use DigitalOcean Volumes Block Storage.

Each Droplet includes a generous amount of free outbound data transfer, starting from 500 GiB/month depending on plan. Inbound bandwidth is always free.

Droplets are available at a variety of price points starting from as low as $4 per month, based on RAM, CPU, SSD storage, and bandwidth included in your plan.

Droplets are billed on a per-second basis, with a 60-second minimum and a monthly cap, so you never pay more than the monthly price for a Droplet.

DigitalOcean often provides promotional credits for new users to try Droplets and other services for free. Check the website for current offers.

Droplets are versatile — hosting websites and web apps, dev/test environments, databases, CI/CD pipelines, VPN and proxy servers, game servers, and ML/AI applications with GPU-optimized Droplets.

Yes — Droplets provide the performance, scalability, and security needed to run online stores of all sizes.

DigitalOcean is often praised for simplicity and a developer-friendly interface, great for individuals and SMBs. AWS EC2 offers a wider range of instance types for large enterprises. DigitalOcean is generally more affordable for comparable resources.

Google Compute Engine is a more enterprise-focused platform with a vast array of services. DigitalOcean Droplets are known for straightforward pricing and ease of use, popular with developers and startups.

Create a new Droplet from the DigitalOcean control panel in a few clicks — choose your OS, plan, and datacenter region, and your server is up in under a minute.

You can connect using SSH (Secure Shell) with an SSH client and either the root password or an SSH key.

The core Droplet offering is unmanaged. DigitalOcean also offers a Managed Kubernetes service, and you can find managed hosting partners specializing in DigitalOcean infrastructure.

Datacenters are located worldwide, including New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Singapore, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, Bangalore, and Richmond.

Yes — you can create a Droplet in the London (UK) datacenter, ideal for serving customers in the UK and Europe.

Yes — DigitalOcean has a datacenter in Bangalore, India, ideal for the Indian market and surrounding regions.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay (Apple Pay requires Safari). Contact sales for wire transfer, purchase orders, or ACH.

Billing cycles are monthly. On the first day of each month, the previous month's usage is invoiced and charged to your primary payment method, unless usage exceeds a threshold sooner.

No — your card is only charged at the end of the billing cycle or upon exceeding a usage threshold. A small temporary pre-authorization may appear and is immediately released.

Taxes are applied where required by law. Check the documentation to see whether your country is affected and at what rate.

The documentation covers destroying Droplets, Kubernetes clusters, Managed Databases, Spaces, Volumes, Firewalls, and Load Balancers.

Yes — you can set up billing alerts and receive an email if monthly spending exceeds an amount you specify.

A credit is applied automatically and used before your card is charged. Any unspent credit expires at the end of its validity period (e.g., 90 days).

You're only charged for the underlying compute the 1-Click App runs on.

Visit the billing page, open the payment method menu, and choose Delete. Note the default payment method cannot be removed.

If you're interested in prepayment, contact the sales team for options.

Refunds aren't offered by default. For extenuating circumstances, contact support.