DigitalOcean Droplets

DigitalOcean Droplets are powerful, flexible, and developer-friendly virtual private servers (VPS) designed to help you deploy and scale applications with confidence. Whether you're building a personal blog, launching a production application, or running complex microservices, Droplets provide the reliable infrastructure foundation you need.

Simple Yet Powerful Virtual Machines

Droplets combine simplicity with enterprise-grade performance. Deploy a new server in under 55 seconds through an intuitive control panel or API. Choose from flexible configurations ranging from basic shared CPU instances perfect for development and testing, to dedicated CPU plans optimized for production workloads demanding consistent performance.

Transparent and Predictable Pricing

Starting at just $4/month, Droplets offer exceptional value with transparent pricing that includes:

• Generous bandwidth allowances starting at 500 GB/month included

• No hidden egress fees - additional bandwidth at just $0.01/GB

• Free inbound data transfer for all traffic entering your Droplets

• Hourly billing with monthly caps ensuring you never pay more than the monthly rate

• SSD storage included in every plan for fast disk I/O operations

️ Flexible Configuration Options

Droplets offer extensive customization to match your specific requirements:

• Shared CPU Droplets - Cost-effective instances ideal for development, testing, and low-traffic websites

• Dedicated CPU Droplets - Premium instances with dedicated vCPU cores for production applications requiring consistent performance

• Memory-Optimized Droplets - High RAM configurations perfect for databases, caching, and memory-intensive applications

• CPU-Optimized Droplets - Maximum compute power for CPU-bound workloads, batch processing, and high-traffic applications

Global Data Center Network

Deploy Droplets in strategic locations worldwide to minimize latency and improve user experience. DigitalOcean operates data centers across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and more, allowing you to position infrastructure close to your users. All data centers feature redundant networking, enterprise-grade hardware, and 99.99% uptime SLA.

Developer-Friendly Tools and Integration

Droplets integrate seamlessly into modern development workflows:

• One-Click Applications - Deploy pre-configured stacks like WordPress, Docker, LAMP, and more in seconds

• Custom Images - Upload your own VM images or create snapshots for rapid deployment

• Cloud-init support - Automate initial server setup with user data scripts

• Team collaboration - Share access and manage permissions across your organization

• Terraform provider - Manage infrastructure as code with native DigitalOcean support

Security and Networking Features

Built-in security features protect your infrastructure without additional cost:

• Cloud Firewalls - Free network-level security filtering traffic before it reaches your Droplets

• Private networking - Secure communication between resources using Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

• Reserved IPs - Static IP addresses that can be instantly reassigned between Droplets

• Automated backups - Schedule weekly snapshots for disaster recovery (additional cost)

• DDoS protection - Built-in mitigation against network-layer attacks at no extra charge

Monitoring and Management

Comprehensive visibility into your infrastructure's health and performance:

• Built-in metrics - Monitor CPU, memory, disk, and bandwidth usage in real-time

• Custom alerts - Receive notifications when resources exceed defined thresholds

• Console access - Browser-based terminal for emergency access when SSH is unavailable

• Activity logs - Complete audit trail of all actions taken on your Droplets

• Kernel management - Choose between standard and recovery kernels for maximum control

Scaling and High Availability

Grow your infrastructure effortlessly as your needs evolve. Resize Droplets vertically by upgrading to larger plans with more CPU, RAM, and storage. Scale horizontally by deploying multiple Droplets behind Load Balancers for redundancy and increased capacity. Leverage Floating IPs to implement failover configurations that maintain uptime during maintenance or unexpected outages.

Storage Flexibility

Every Droplet includes fast SSD storage, with the ability to expand capacity through Volumes - highly available block storage that can be attached and detached from Droplets without downtime. Volumes provide an additional 1TB to 16TB of storage per volume, perfect for databases, media files, and growing datasets that exceed included storage.

Ideal Use Cases

Droplets excel across diverse scenarios:

• Web hosting - Deploy traditional websites, blogs, and content management systems

• Application servers - Run Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP, and other application frameworks

• Development environments - Create isolated testing and staging environments

• CI/CD pipelines - Build and deploy applications automatically

• Game servers - Host multiplayer game instances with low latency

• VPN servers - Set up private networking tunnels for secure remote access

• Database hosting - Run MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Redis instances

Community and Support

Access one of the largest developer communities with over 6,000 tutorials, extensive documentation, and active community forums. DigitalOcean's emphasis on education and knowledge-sharing makes it easier to learn cloud infrastructure concepts and solve common challenges. Professional support plans are available for production workloads requiring guaranteed response times.

Perfect for Learning and Growth

Droplets are designed to grow with you. Start with an affordable $4/month instance to learn Linux administration, experiment with new technologies, or launch a side project. As your skills and requirements grow, seamlessly upgrade to more powerful configurations or sophisticated architectures using Kubernetes, Load Balancers, and managed databases - all within the same platform.