DigitalOcean: Simplicity as the Product

Droplets and the rest of the catalogue

A droplet is a virtual machine. Plans come in a few families:

• Basic (shared CPU) — the default, in regular and premium Intel/AMD variants.
• General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, Memory-Optimized, Storage-Optimized — dedicated vCPU tiers for predictable performance.
• GPU Droplets — NVIDIA hardware for training and inference.

Around them: Managed Databases (Postgres, MySQL, Redis, Kafka, MongoDB), Spaces object storage with a built-in CDN, Volumes for block storage, Load Balancers, a managed Kubernetes service (DOKS), and App Platform, which builds and runs an application from a Git repository without you touching a server.

That is close to the complete list, and the completeness is the feature. You can hold the whole platform in your head.

What droplet limits mean

Every DigitalOcean account has a droplet limit — the maximum number of droplets it can run simultaneously. New accounts start low, often three to ten, and the limit rises with account history or on request through support.

The limit is per account, not per region, and it counts droplets rather than vCPU. It is also the attribute most likely to block a plan, which is why the DigitalOcean account configurations are described by droplet limit and by whether a payment card is already attached — an account with no card cannot create billable resources at all.

Transfer and how billing works

Droplets are billed hourly with a monthly cap, so a droplet destroyed mid-month costs only the hours it ran. Each droplet includes an outbound transfer allowance, and allowances pool across the account.

Two costs catch people out: snapshots and reserved IPs. Snapshots are billed per gigabyte per month and accumulate quietly. A reserved IP is free while attached to a droplet and billed hourly while unattached, which means destroying a droplet without releasing its IP leaves a small ongoing charge.

Where it fits

Setting up an account sensibly

1. Change the password and enable two-factor authentication.
2. Add an SSH key under Settings → Security before creating any droplet.
3. Check Settings → Team for members you did not invite, and API → Tokens for tokens you did not create. Revoke anything unfamiliar.
4. Create a Project to group resources — it keeps billing and organisation clean from the start.
5. Create the droplet with the SSH key attached and password authentication off.
6. Add a Cloud Firewall. It applies at the network level, before packets reach the droplet.
7. Enable backups or set a snapshot schedule.
8. Set a billing alert under Settings → Billing.

Step three is the one to be thorough about. API tokens on DigitalOcean are full-power credentials that keep working after a password change, so any token you did not create should be revoked before you deploy.

Port 25 and mail

Outbound port 25 is blocked on new accounts. DigitalOcean’s documented position is to use an email service rather than sending directly from a droplet, and unblock requests are reviewed case by case. Plan for a relay unless the account you are using already has it open.

Common questions

Where to go next

DigitalOcean and Linode are the classic head-to-head — the comparison is here. Account configurations, including droplet limits and card status, are on the DigitalOcean account page.