DigitalOcean vs OpenMetal
Deciding which cloud hosting solution makes the most sense for your business and use case? Let’s break down what each platform offers.
Compare OpenMetal and DigitalOcean’s Hosted Cloud Infrastructure Options
Selecting a cloud hosting solution can be a complex decision. There are many factors to consider like cost, performance, hardware specifications, and global reach.
This comparison guide will break down the offerings of OpenMetal vs DigitalOcean to help you determine which provider is the best fit for your specific needs and budget. We’ll look at key features, pricing, and technical details to help you make an informed decision.
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OpenMetal and DigitalOcean represent distinct approaches to cloud hosting, catering to different needs and priorities within the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) landscape.
OpenMetal specializes in providing hosted private cloud solutions, built upon the open source platforms OpenStack and Ceph. OpenMetal offers users a fully dedicated and highly customizable cloud environment. This approach aims to deliver the benefits of a private cloud with the operational ease often associated with public clouds.
DigitalOcean is a well-known cloud infrastructure service provider recognized for its simplicity, developer-friendliness, and a broad portfolio of cloud services that extends beyond just virtual machines. DigitalOcean’s core value proposition centers on offering easy-to-use and scalable cloud resources at competitive prices.
With this guide, we hope to provide a neutral and comprehensive comparison of both providers’ cloud hosting capabilities to assist readers in making informed decisions based on their needs. We’ll cover aspects buyers care about most such as pricing, data center locations, outbound data transfer, storage, uptime guarantees, deployment speed, bandwidth, and support services.
OpenMetal Pricing
OpenMetal’s pricing structure reflects its focus on providing fully dedicated, ready-to-use private cloud environments. The entry point for a hosted private cloud is around $583 for their XS hardware on a month-to-month agreement. For users willing to commit to a longer term, a 1-year agreement can bring the starting monthly price down to $539/month, and their longest 5-year agreement option lowers that to $385.
It’s important to note that these figures represent the starting price for a cluster of three servers, which forms the foundation of their private cloud offering. While these are entry-level costs, the actual monthly expenditure varies based on the specific hardware configuration and the size of the “Cloud Core” selected, with many options up to around $10,000/month. OpenMetal’s pricing model is flexible, offering both on-demand billing and agreements spanning from 1 to 5 years, with 30-70% discounts as agreement lengths increase.
OpenMetal has tools like an online cloud deployment calculator and the ability to set daily budgets for cloud clusters, offering mechanisms for cost management. They emphasize transparent pricing, including fixed bandwidth costs and generous included outbound data transfer to support predictable spend.
The focus on a multi-server setup as the entry point means that OpenMetal’s solutions are tailored for users with more substantial resource needs from the outset, contrasting with the very small, individual entry point instances available on some cloud platforms.
DigitalOcean Pricing
DigitalOcean’s pricing strategy caters to a wider range of users, including those with smaller-scale requirements. Their lowest cost option is a Basic Droplet, which starts at just $4 per month. This entry-level instance provides 512 MiB of RAM, 1 vCPU, 10 GiB of SSD storage, and 500 GiB of data transfer.
While DigitalOcean does offer discounted annual pricing for its GPU Droplets, information regarding similar discounts for a 1-year commitment on standard CPU-based Droplets is not readily available.
The primary pricing model for standard Droplets is based on hourly usage, which is then capped at a fixed monthly rate. This hourly billing with a monthly maximum provides users with a pay-as-you-go approach, aligning costs closely with actual resource consumption.
Additionally, creating a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) on DigitalOcean is free of charge, allowing users to build private networks without incurring additional infrastructure expenses. The resources within the VPC, such as Droplets, are still billed according to their respective pricing models.
The significantly lower entry point of DigitalOcean’s Droplets makes it an accessible option for individual developers and smaller projects, as opposed to OpenMetal’s minimum commitment to a 3-server private cloud.
| OpenMetal | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest Cost Option (Monthly) | $583 for a baseline XS 3-server cloud core (96 GB of RAM, 3 Intel Xeon E3-1230v6 CPUs, 2.88 TB of SSD storage, and 46 TB of data transfer) | $4 for a Basic Droplet (512 MiB of RAM, 1 vCPU, 10 GiB of SSD storage, and 500 GiB of data transfer) |
| 1-Year Agreement Monthly Cost | $539 for a baseline XS 3-server cloud core | Discounted rates for GPU Droplets, standard Droplets primarily hourly up to fixed monthly rate |
| Pricing Model | On-demand billing with monthly and 1-5 year options | Hourly billing capped at a monthly rate |
^All information may be subject to change because of pricing or service adjustments and/or unique customer resources. Information on this page obtained March 2025.
OpenMetal Data Center Locations
OpenMetal operates data centers in three primary geographical locations: Amsterdam in the Netherlands (Europe), Ashburn, Virginia (US East Coast), and Los Angeles, California (US West Coast).
This selection of locations provides coverage across major internet hubs in both the United States and Europe, offering low latency access for a significant portion of the world.
The presence in Amsterdam is particularly relevant for European users, addressing concerns related to data sovereignty and regional regulations.
DigitalOcean Data Center Locations
DigitalOcean boasts an extensive global network of data centers. Their infrastructure spans across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, encompassing 9 regions with a total of 15 data centers. These regions include New York City and San Francisco in the United States, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Singapore, London in the United Kingdom, Frankfurt in Germany, Toronto in Canada, Bangalore in India, and Sydney in Australia.
This wider distribution can offer advantages in terms of lower latency for users located in a more diverse range of locations. The presence of multiple data centers within some cities also provides greater redundancy and choice for users.
| OpenMetal | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| North America Data Centers | Ashburn, Virginia; Los Angeles, California | New York City, New York (4x); San Francisco, California (2x); Santa Clara, California; Toronto, Canada |
| Europe Data Centers | Amsterdam, The Netherlands | Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2x); London, United Kingdom; Frankfurt, Germany |
| Asia and Oceania Data Centers | N/A | Singapore; Bangalore, India; Sydney, Australia |
OpenMetal Bandwidth and Egress
OpenMetal includes a very generous amount of outbound data transfer with its hosted private cloud solutions. The included monthly allowance can range from 46 TB to 925 TB depending on the specific plan. Medium and larger clusters come with a 1 Gbps egress port, estimated to handle around 155 TB per month under typical traffic conditions. Even their “Small” hardware configuration includes 200 Mbps of public bandwidth per server. This substantial inclusion of egress aims to provide predictable costs for users with high data transfer needs.
When it comes to exceeding the included outbound data transfer limits, rather than charging for every gigabyte of outbound traffic, OpenMetal measures bandwidth usage over time and discards the top 5% of usage spikes, meaning you’re billed only for your typical usage patterns, not your occasional peaks. Estimated per GB costs range from approximately $.0001-.0085 depending on the total usage volume.
DigitalOcean Bandwidth and Egress
DigitalOcean includes a modest amount of free outbound data transfer with its Droplets, starting at 500 GiB per month. The allowance scales up with higher-tier Droplet plans, reaching up to around 11 TB per month for the most powerful instances. This is a reasonable amount for many workloads, but may not be quite sufficient for those with high data transfer needs.
DigitalOcean has a straightforward overage charge of $0.01 per GiB for outbound data transfer that goes beyond the monthly included allowance for Droplets. This simple and cost-effective overage cost provides predictable billing for users who exceed their allocated bandwidth.
| OpenMetal | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Included Monthly Egress (Lowest) | 46 TB | 500 GiB |
| Included Monthly Egress (Highest) | 925 TB | 11 TB |
| Overage Egress Charges | $.0001-.0085/GB | $.01/GiB |
OpenMetal Storage
OpenMetal’s hosted private cloud includes a significant amount of storage powered by Ceph, a highly available and scalable open source storage platform. Ceph offers unified block, file, and object storage, providing flexibility for different types of data and applications.
Additionally, users have the option to utilize LVM on local disks for potentially higher performance in specific use cases.
For their “Small” hardware configuration, OpenMetal includes 3.2 TB of fast NVMe SSD storage per server, along with a separate 256 GB boot disk. Given that their base offering is a 3-server cluster, this translates to a substantial amount of high-performance storage available from the outset, supporting users with significant storage requirements.
DigitalOcean Storage
DigitalOcean includes SSD storage with all of its Droplet plans. The amount of included storage varies considerably depending on the chosen Droplet type and size.
Basic Droplets offer between 10 GiB and 320 GiB of SSD storage. Storage-Optimized Droplets provide the largest amounts of included SSD, starting at 300 GiB and going up to 4,690 GiB. This tiered approach allows users to select a Droplet plan that aligns with their storage needs and budget.
For users requiring additional storage beyond what is included with their Droplet, DigitalOcean also offers Block Storage Volumes as a separate, scalable storage solution.
| OpenMetal | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest Amount of Included Storage | 2.88 TB SATA SSD (XS cloud core) | 10 GiB SSD (Basic Droplet) |
| Highest Amount of Included Storage | 48 TB NVMe SSD + 648 TB HDD + 1.536 TB Boot Disk total across three server cluster (Storage Large V3) | 4,690 GiB SSD (Storage-Optimized Droplet) |
OpenMetal Support and Service
OpenMetal offers a suite of support options, including documentation, email, chat, a help desk/ticket system, and a dedicated Slack channel for all support tiers. They provide a base level of “Support Only” included with all plans and an enhanced “Assisted Management” level available for longer-term agreements, which costs an $800 base fee plus a per-box fee.
OpenMetal also emphasizes close collaboration with its customers, providing dedicated support teams that include an account manager, account engineer, and executive sponsor, as well as Slack for direct engineer-to-engineer support.
OpenMetal provides a strong uptime SLA for its infrastructure with 99.96% network uptime. To provide assurance and accountability, OpenMetal has a detailed Service Level Agreement that outlines service credit percentages based on the actual monthly uptime achieved. For example, if the uptime falls below 99.99% but remains at or above 99.0%, a 10% service credit is offered. This policy ensures that users are compensated for any significant downtime.
DigitalOcean Support and Service
DigitalOcean offers a tiered support system with four distinct plans. The “Starter” plan is free and includes email support with a response time of less than 24 hours. The paid plans are “Developer” ($24/month with <8-hour response), “Standard” ($99/month with <2-hour response, including live chat), and “Premium” ($999/month with <30-minute response, including dedicated Slack channel, live chat, and video calls).
These plans offer progressively faster response times, additional support channels, and access to more experienced technical support staff, allowing users to choose a level of support that aligns with their needs and budget.
DigitalOcean offers a 99.99% uptime SLA for its core services, including Droplets and Volumes Block Storage. This SLA also extends to their network and power infrastructure. Their service credit policy for Droplets and Block Storage is strong, offering a full credit of 100% of the lost time at the hourly rate if the 99.99% uptime commitment is not met. This shows a high level of confidence in the reliability of their platform and a strong commitment to minimizing the impact of any service disruptions on their users.
| OpenMetal | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Included Support Level | Support Only (Email, Chat, Ticket, Dedicated Slack Channel) | Starter (Free Email Support) |
| Paid Support Options/Levels | Assisted Management (1-5 Year Agreement, $800 Base + Per Box Fee) | Developer, Standard, Premium (tiered features and pricing from $24-999/month) |
| Support Channels | Documentation, Email, Chat, Ticket, Dedicated Slack Channel | Email (all plans), Live Chat (Standard, Premium), Dedicated Slack Channel (Premium), Video Calls (Premium) |
| Response Time | Within 30 minutes for critical issues, general response times vary | < 24 hours (Starter Plan) to <30-minutes (Premium Plan) |
| Uptime SLA | 99.96% | 99.99% |
OpenMetal Deployment Time
OpenMetal highlights its exceptionally fast deployment time for new hosted OpenStack private clouds, with the ability to provision a fully functional private cloud environment in under 60 seconds, with many deployments taking as little as 45 seconds.
This rapid provisioning is a big advantage for users who need to quickly scale their infrastructure or spin up new environments for development or testing.
DigitalOcean Deployment Time
DigitalOcean is also known for its fast deployment times, particularly for its virtual machines (Droplets), which can typically be deployed in seconds. This rapid provisioning of individual VMs is a key aspect of their developer-friendly platform.
However, the deployment time for more complex resources like Kubernetes clusters can range from 3 to 10 minutes, and build times for applications on their App Platform can sometimes take up to 60 minutes depending on the application’s complexity.
| OpenMetal | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment Time | 45 seconds for available pre-configured hardware | A few seconds to 60 minutes depending on the resources and complexity |
| Autoscaling | Not natively available | Available through Droplet Autoscale Pools |
Both OpenMetal and DigitalOcean provide cloud hosting solutions with data centers in the US and Europe, offer uptime SLAs and fast resource deployment, and provide various support options. However, key differences distinguish their offerings.
OpenMetal focuses on hosted private clouds built on OpenStack and Ceph, while DigitalOcean offers a broader range of public cloud services, primarily virtual machines (Droplets). OpenMetal’s pricing starts with a 3-server minimum private cloud, leading to a higher entry cost compared to DigitalOcean’s low-cost individual Droplets.
OpenMetal includes very high egress allowances with 95th percentile megabit overage billing, whereas DigitalOcean provides lower allowances with per-GB overage charges.
OpenMetal boasts rapid private cloud deployment, while DigitalOcean excels in fast Droplet deployment.
OpenMetal includes high private bandwidth, and DigitalOcean provides a monthly public bandwidth allowance per Droplet.
Finally, their support models differ, with OpenMetal offering a strong base support and an assisted management option, and DigitalOcean providing a tiered support plan system.
Wrapping Up – Which Makes Sense For You?
OpenMetal and DigitalOcean offer distinct cloud hosting solutions tailored to different user needs.
OpenMetal‘s hosted private cloud is a strong contender for users and businesses requiring dedicated infrastructure, extensive control through OpenStack, and predictable costs for high-bandwidth and high-egress workloads. Their rapid private cloud deployment and comprehensive support further enhance their value proposition for organizations prioritizing private cloud benefits with public cloud-like agility.
DigitalOcean, with its ease of use, developer-friendly platform, and competitive pricing for individual virtual machines, remains a popular choice for a wide spectrum of users, from individual developers to larger companies seeking scalable and accessible cloud resources.
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