Head to head DigitalOcean vs SiteGround comparison looking at how features, performance, prices, pros and cons, etc stack up to help you choose between these two popular web hosting services that offer cloud hosting options.
DigitalOcean is a New York City-based cloud hosting provider helping millions of developers easily build, test, manage, and scale applications and websites of any size – faster than ever before. Installing and deploying WordPress on DigitalOcean droplets needs some technical know-how but it's one of the fastest and cheapest cloud hosting services out there.
SiteGround is a web hosting company based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Their hosting services are crafted for top speed, unmatched security, 24/7 fast and expert support. It's one of the best and most well-known hosting companies around and features include automatic upgrades, built-in WP caching, CDN, one-click staging and GIT version control. Plus loads more!
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DigitalOcean | SiteGround | |
| About: | DigitalOcean is a very popular cloud hosting service which provides reasonably priced and flexible cloud hosting services. They are known for their high benchmarks and a guarantee of 99% uptime. | SiteGround is known to have reasonably priced plans for its customers along with accompanying technical features and amazing customer support. |
| Founded in: | 2011 | 2004 |
| BBB Rating: | A+ | A |
| Address: | 101 6th Ave, New York, NY 10013 | SiteGround Office, 8 Racho Petkov Kazandzhiata, Sofia 1776, Bulgaria |
| Phone Number: | (347) 903-7918 | (866) 605-2484 |
| Email Address: | Not Listed | [email protected] |
| Types of Support: | Phone, Live Support, Chat, Ticket | Phone, Live Support, Chat, Ticket |
| Data Center / Server Location: | London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Toronto, and Singapore. | Chicago Illinois, Amsterdam Netherlands, Singapore and London UK |
| Monthly Price: | From $5.00 per month | From $6.99 per month |
| Unlimited Data Transfer: | No (From 1TB) | Yes |
| Unlimited Data Storage: | No (From 25GB) | No (10GB - 30GB) |
| Unlimited Emails: | No | Yes |
| Host Multiple Domains: | Yes | Yes (Except on StartUp plan) |
| Hosting Controlpanel / Interface: | DigitalOcean interface | cPanel |
| Server Uptime Guarantee: | 99.99% | 99.90% |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 30 Days | 30 Days |
| Dedicated Hosting Available: | No (only Cloud available) | Yes |
| Bonuses & Extras: | Cheapest cloud hosting starts at $5 per month. $5 Droplet include 1GB of RAM, 1GB RAM and 25GB SSD storage Active developer community and forum. | CloudFlare content delivery network (CDN). Free backup and restore tools (except with StartUp plan). Free private SSL certificate for one year (except with StartUp). |
| The Good: | Quick setup: Because of the solid state drives they have, it takes approximately 55 seconds for your server to spin up. High Benchmark Scores: DigitalOceans disk benchmark scores are very high compared to other companies. Free Static IP: Some cloud hosting sites offer static IP for an additional price, but at DigitalOcean, they come for free. SSD only servers. | Free Premium Features: SiteGround includes advanced features like automatic daily backups, CloudFlare CDN, and Let's Encrypt SSL certificates with every plan. Optimized Plans: SiteGround offers hosting packages designed specifically for top performance on content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, or e-commerce platforms like Magento, PrestaShop, and WooCommerce. Fantastic Customer Support: SiteGround guarantees near-instantaneous reply times across all of its customer support channels. Robust Uptime Guarantee: SiteGround promises you 99.99% uptime. SiteGround pricing starts at $6.99 per month. |
| The Bad: | Cloud hosting is not ideal for absolute beginners. | Limited Resources: Some of SiteGround lower-priced plans are saddled with limitations like domain or storage space caps. Sluggish Website Migrations: If you've got an existing website, numerous user complaints indicate that you should prepare for a long transfer process with SiteGround. No Windows Hosting: SiteGround's boosted speed relies in part on cutting-edge Linux container technology, so don't expect Windows-based hosting here. For more options, consider these SiteGround alternatives. |
| Summary: | DigitalOcean users can spin up a Droplet and gain root access to a computer instance about 55 seconds. This is the first and only all-SSD cloud host with an intuitive and simple API allowing for large-scale production workloads. Highly available storage up to 16 TB can be attached as needed and a lightning fast network is also provided. Load balancing is also provided as a service along with monitoring and alerting with pre-built open source apps. | SiteGround (review) is the perfect base framework for users to host their blogs or websites. Features are astounding such as SSD drives for all plans and improved speedy performance with NGINX, HTTP/2, PHP7 and free CDN. More features include free SSL certificate an user app updates. The proprietary and unique firewall security rules enable users to avoid system vulnerabilities. There is also free website transfer and serves which have been placed on three continents. There also exists premium features for WordPress along with highly responsive live chat. |
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DigitalOcean vs SiteGround – The Bottom Line
DigitalOcean and SiteGround are both famous in cloud hosting. SiteGround is a general web hosting company offering cloud hosting. On the other hand, DigitalOcean specializes in cloud hosting. To give you an accurate and reliable comparison, it is best to consider such parameters as pricing, ease of use, performance, support, key features, and security.
With all the checks and balances, SiteGround proves to beat DigitalOcean in almost all aspects.