Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) vs. DigitalOcean Droplets

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon RDS
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) from Amazon Web Services.N/A
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
DigitalOcean's Droplets is designed to help the user spin up a virtual machine in just 55 seconds. Standard, General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, or Memory-Optimized configurations provide flexibility to build, test, and grow an app from startup to scale.
$4
per month
Pricing
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Editions & Modules
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
$0.24 ($0.48)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for MariaDB
$0.25 ($0.50)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for MySQL
$0.29 ($0.58)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for Oracle
$0.482 ($0.964)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for SQL Server
$1.02 ($1.52)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Basic
$4
per month
CPU-Optimized
$42
per month
General Purpose
$63
per month
Memory-Optimized
$84
per month
Storage-Optimized
$131
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon RDSDigitalOcean Droplets
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for DigitalOcean Droplets varies depending on the size of the virtual environment and the associated data needs.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Features
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
-
Ratings
DigitalOcean Droplets
8.8
1 Ratings
7% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)DigitalOcean Droplets
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InterSystems IRIS
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Score 7.8 out of 10
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
InterSystems IRIS
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Score 7.8 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
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SAP IQ
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(131 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(8 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.6
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)DigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
If your application needs a relational data store and uses other AWS services, AWS RDS is a no-brainer. It offers all the traditional database features, makes it a snap to set up, creates cross-region replication, has advanced security, built-in monitoring, and much more at a very good price. You can also set up streaming to a data lake using various other AWS services on your RDS.
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DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Droplets are the best choice for developers teams that need reliable Linux servers to deploy their projects, the ability to create a droplet for testing purposes then destroy it, and only get charged for the few hours used makes the chances of messing up very slim. DigitalOcean Droplets is a great solution because the servers are scalable and the process of adding more resources like CPU or RAM to an existing droplet takes only a few minutes and once a server is scaled up it can also be scaled down if necessary which is perfect for supporting a temporary peak in traffic for example.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Automated Database Management: We use it for streamlining routine tasks like software patching and database backups.
  • Scalability on Demand: we use it to handle traffic spikes, scaling both vertically and horizontally.
  • Database Engine Compatibility: It works amazingly with multiple database engines used by different departments within our organization including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.
  • Monitoring: It covers our extensive monitoring and logging, and also has great compatibility with Amazon CloudWatch
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DigitalOcean
  • Simplicity to scale services--the interface is very quick and effective to use
  • Reliability--this is key for us, as any downtime effects our reputation
  • Keeps the costs down--hosting our own equivalent infrastructure would cost a lot more
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • It is a little difficult to configure and connect to an RDS instance. The integration with ECS can be made more seamless.
  • Exploring features within RDS is not very easy and intuitive. Either a human friendly documentation should be added or the User Interface be made intuitive so that people can explore and find features on their own.
  • There should be tools to analyze cost and minimize it according to the usage.
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DigitalOcean
  • In terms of an availability zone, they have limitations not available in most of the geographical locations.
  • No live support is available which can cause problem if you have outage.
  • Number of service is quite limited.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
We do renew our use of Amazon Relational Database Service. We don't have any problems faced with RDS in place. RDS has taken away lot of overhead of hosting database, managing the database and keeping a team just to manage database. Even the backup, security and recovery another overhead that has been taken away by RDS. So, we will keep on using RDS.
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DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Usability
Amazon AWS
I've been using AWS Relational Database Services in several projects in different environments and from the AWS products, maybe this one together to EC2 are my favourite. They deliver what they promise. Reliable, fast, easy and with a fair price (in comparison to commercial products which have obscure license agreements).
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DigitalOcean
Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
I have only had good experiences in working with AWS support. I will admit that my experience comes from the benefit of having a premium tier of support but even working with free-tier accounts I have not had problems getting help with AWS products when needed. And most often, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining how to operate a service so a quick spin through the docs has been useful in solving problems.
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DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Amazon AWS
the online training & digital content available on the web from AWS was having sufficient information to deploy and run the service
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DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) stands out among similar products due to its seamless integration with other AWS services, automated backups, and multi-AZ deployments for high availability. Its support for various database engines, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle, provides flexibility. Additionally, RDS offers managed security features, including encryption and IAM integration, enhancing data protection. The pay-as-you-go pricing model makes it cost-effective. Overall, Amazon RDS excels in ease of use, scalability, and a comprehensive feature set, making it a top choice for organizations seeking a reliable and scalable managed relational database service in the cloud.
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DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Droplets is continuously evolving to be more and more powerful. It has great features and has low cost options, which is really great for developers. Its CDN, Loadbalancer, etc. make it a good place to host a high-traffic application. Moroever, DigitalOcean Droplets has a nonprofit program that helps nonprofit sites to run their infrastructure, which is tremendous and no competitor of DigitalOcean Droplets does that.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • The overall cost increases, but we spect this and we can mitigate other risks.
  • Is easy to work from the cloud. Is reliable, but we keep our local solution as well where RDS works quite good.
  • RDS allow us to focurs on owr objetives instead of the other matters regarding databases.
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DigitalOcean
  • Digital Ocean has been great helping us move web apps to the cloud
  • Digital Ocean has been really helpful when hiring contractors
  • The interface could use some work, but overall its not terrible
Read full review
ScreenShots

Amazon RDS Screenshots

Screenshot of A look inside the RDS console.