I think this article misses a really important comparison point.<p>Does anyone know if Lightsail uses the same CPU credit system as t2 EC2 instances?<p>Details on what CPU credits are can be found at: <a href="http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-instances.html#t2-instances-cpu-credits" rel="nofollow">http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-instan...</a><p>Basically if you use too much CPU for too long, AWS will throttle your CPU usage. This is detrimental to performance in cases where you're not just idling most of the time.<p>I've had plenty of apps on DO use 40-60% CPU 24/7 without any performance degradation or throttling. Will Lightsail do the same?
The IO performance, CPU throttling, and price per resource lag make Lightsail a joke compared to DO.<p>But at least Lightsail comes with a cape. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/does-digital-ocean-come-with-a-cape-and-a-motorcycle-like-amazon-lightsail" rel="nofollow">https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/does-digita...</a>
It took me a while to figure out how to minimize the share via social media bar that pops up on the left. Which for me seems to block the first 4 letters on the left hand side at my current screen width. Just a heads up. When I move to a larger 1080p monitor there is a space on the left so it doesn't block it. Look at your page with 1600 x 900. Not sure if this is an issue for you but I thought I'd mention it.
I really think Amazon is about to kill DigitalOcean with LightSail. I have already spun up a few instances from LightSail and its almost a carbon copy of DO but with the power of the AWS ecosystem behind it. I think its now the prefect platform for startups with still pretty minimal costs but the ability to have my Node app on LightSail storage resources on S3 and have a managed database with RDS is a no brainer. I think people are a little too worried about the difference of a few dollars between AWS and DO now and are missing the amount of traffic you could handle for less than 100$ a month with LightSail and the ability to more easily scale later on.
In the "Where DigitalOcean Beats Lightsail" section, you might add that the OS selection on Lightsail is extremely limited. I believe you can currently only choose Amazon Linux or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
"In the performance testing section later on in this post, we'll see how those numbers hold up to stress tests."<p>I don't see it. Did I miss the performance testing section?
AWS currently not offering Lightsail/EC2 hosting within Canada, as well. DigitalOcean has been in Toronto for a while. Certainly not an important detail to many, but it was for me.<p>AWS has been saying they will open in Canada for quite a while... seem to keep pushing the date further and further.
I've been a DO customer for years but all it would take to sell me on Lightsail at this point is if Lightsail performance beats DO. but from what i'm seeing, it seems like that's not the case?
I completely disagree that digital ocean has a loyal customer base, their customer support has been degrading across time and minor annoyances such as wp servers keep failing and you have to reset your instance, just minor stuff like that has been adding over the years and I've been wondering if a company will show up so I can move my stuff over there.<p>This looks like it will be it. They just got so annoying it was unbearable.
A great comparison between DigitalOcean and LightSail. I was looking for this.<p>One small correction, AWS doesn't have any more the largest footprint when it comes to regions and revenue. Microsoft Azure now has more regions and DCs than AWS and Google combined. And for the revenue they reached 15B dollar mark by last quarter, making it the the largest and the most profitable cloud provider ever. Who would thought that is possible two years ago!
I won't use Lightsale precisely because it exists.<p>While AWS is a great collection of services, it is needlesly complicated to use and at times very frustrating. Using it at work is fine since the span of services is so wide I can forgive the awful user experience, but if I have to vote with my feelings, I choose the service I use in private, when I pick what I like.<p>In this case DigitalOcean.
wish they'd matched linode. Oh wait they have poor performance, never mind...though actually the bandwidth might be useful cost-wise still, relative to "normal" AWS bandwidth costs at least, until you reach the max, then apparently it's $0.09/GB, whereas DO is $0.02 per GB for overage (and I think they don't actually charge for it yet even LOL).<p>digitalocean is being attacked on all sides, interesting.
Hard to believe that giant AWS is trying to imitate one of its upstart competitors...