DigitalOcean Droplets vs Hetzner Cloud

DigitalOcean Droplets

Every plan is published with exact numbers — 1 GiB RAM, 1 vCPU, 1,000 GiB transfer and 25 GiB SSD for $6.00 monthly — and the hardware is named: 5th Gen AMD EPYC on v5, NVMe on Storage-Optimized, up to 10Gbps on CPU-Optimized Premium. There is a 99.99% uptime SLA for Droplets with product-level SLAs listed alongside, plus free monitoring and highly available load balancers. I found no public information on a public status page with incident history, service credits, or any caching layer or CDN on the virtual-machine side.

Hetzner Cloud

The WordPress app image proves real sites run here, and there is a public status page with incident history, planned maintenance notices and email notification of status reports. But the captured pages state no CPU, RAM or storage figures per server type, no PHP version handling, and no uptime target or SLA, so I can't size a client's project from them.

DigitalOcean Droplets

This is exactly how I want to work: a documented HTTP API for Droplets and other resources, the official doctl command-line tool, a Terraform provider, an OAuth API and even a metadata service, with on-demand snapshots and free cloud firewalls all scriptable. The App Platform adds Git deployment from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and container registries with PHP, Laravel and Symfony named, staging, production and preview environments, rollback with up to 10 revisions, and separate worker components for queue jobs. I found no public information on DNS or domain management through the API, or per-project roles beyond unlimited users with two-factor login.

Hetzner Cloud

This is how I like to work: a versioned REST API plus the hcloud CLI covering servers, load balancers, volumes, firewalls, floating IPs, placement groups and DNS, with Go and Python libraries alongside, and root login by SSH key or password documented on the WordPress app — I can script a whole client stack from that. Below the top because Git deployment, Composer and staging flows are not documented on the captured pages, roles only appear as "restricted users and users with role above that", and there is no agency or white-label view. Server, Storage Box and domain transfers between accounts are documented, which is what I need to hand a project to a client.

DigitalOcean Droplets

Free cloud firewalls, two-factor login and free monitoring come with every Droplet, and managed SSL with renewal, DDoS protection and automatic OS patching are documented on the App Platform side. Backups are priced at 20% (Weekly) or 30% (Daily) of Droplet cost, or usage-based at $0.01/GiB per month with frequencies up to every 4 hours and retention from 3 days to 6 months, and on-demand snapshots can be kept indefinitely at $0.06/GB per month. I found no public information on malware scanning or cleanup, a web application firewall, isolation between customers, certifications, or a second backup location.

Hetzner Cloud

Backups are opt-in per server — the data-protection documentation says cloud servers are unmanaged and setting up backups is the customer's responsibility — with daily copies into seven rotating slots, on-demand snapshots (thirty across all projects, protectable against deletion, kept until I delete them), restore by rebuild or duplicate into any location, and Cloud Firewalls documented; copies land in a different data centre or location. The captured pages give different figures for retention (fourteen days encrypted on the data-protection page, seven rotating slots in the backup documentation), restore is whole-image only, and we found no public information on two-factor login, malware scanning, a web application firewall or ISO 27001 certification; the technical and organizational measures are audited annually by TÜV Rheinland.

DigitalOcean Droplets

Limits are stated in real numbers on every plan — vCPU, RAM, SSD and transfer — rather than 'unlimited', you can resize a Droplet or scale horizontally, attach block storage, and on v5 pick vCPU, memory and storage independently and pay for what you use. Snapshots kept indefinitely can create new Droplets, and pay-as-you-go per-second billing with a 60-second minimum means no term lock-in. I found no public information on a migration service in, exporting data out of the platform, domain transfer, or cancellation and data-deletion terms.

Hetzner Cloud

Portability is genuinely documented: a backup or snapshot can create a new server in any location, snapshots move between projects, and there are documented transfers for cloud servers, Storage Boxes, rack space and domains (domain tokens valid seven days). What the captured pages don't show is tariff up- or downgrades, a migration service in from another host, the cancellation period, or per-tariff limits — the only numeric limits I found (seven backup slots, thirty snapshots) describe the backup system, not the tariffs.

DigitalOcean Droplets

What is documented is a resource library of how-to guides, tutorials and videos, thorough API reference documentation, and a Premium Support plan with response times under 2 hours for businesses needing hands-on help. I found no public information on phone, chat or ticket channels, support hours or languages, or on any domain registration, DNS management or mailbox offering in the same account.

Hetzner Cloud

The help documentation is broad, there is a community forum, and mailbox features are documented in real depth — storage and per-email size limits, spam filters with per-mailbox overrides, retention settings, forwarding copies, expiration dates — with domains and DNS manageable in the same account world. The gap is the humans: a documentation page titled "Support Team opening hours" exists, but the captured pages don't state the hours, the phone or chat channels, or any response times.

DigitalOcean Droplets

The contracting entity is DigitalOcean, LLC under parent DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. of New York, so ownership and the contract sit outside the EU, while Amsterdam data centres (AMS1 through AMS4, with AMS3 recommended) make an EU deployment possible. I found no public information on the subprocessor chain, where backups are kept, or the terms of a data processing agreement, so the end-to-end chain cannot be judged European.

Hetzner Cloud

A strong chain: Hetzner Online GmbH in Gunzenhausen is the contracting entity, EU locations are named (Falkenstein, Nürnberg, Helsinki) in own data centres, master and billing data stay in the EU, backups stay in the EU for EU locations, an Art. 28 GDPR data processing agreement and a subprocessor list are published, the technical and organizational measures are audited annually by TÜV Rheinland, and only German or Finnish authorities with a valid court order are accepted for those data centres. Held below the top because US and Singapore locations place server data in third-country data centres run by group subsidiaries when the customer chooses them, and we found no public information on ISO 27001 or BSI C5 certification for the data centres.

DigitalOcean Droplets

The most computable pricing I have reviewed: every size carries hourly and monthly prices side by side from $0.00595/$4.00 for 512 MiB up to $1.50000/$1,008.00 for 96 GiB, backups at 20% (Weekly) or 30% (Daily) of Droplet cost or $0.01/GiB per month, snapshots at $0.06/GB per month, and per-second billing from January 1, 2026 with a 60-second minimum, under monthly caps or usage-based billing and a plainly stated "We do not offer refunds." I found no public information on VAT treatment for business customers or the per-GiB price of transfer beyond each plan's included allowance.

Hetzner Cloud

The only pricing evidence captured is a pointer — pricing info sits in the info box on hetzner.com/cloud — and the captured pages show no price, term, renewal, setup fee, add-on or VAT figure, so I cannot compute a client's three-year cost from them.