DigitalOcean Droplet
Hacker ApprovedRanked 10 of 21 VPS hosts by recommenders
A cheap, simple VPS for side projects and small sites that run for years with little fuss. Critics warn datacenter IP ranges can get blacklisted or slow.
A cheap, simple VPS for side projects and small sites that run for years with little fuss. Critics warn datacenter IP ranges can get blacklisted or slow.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 79%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 10 years
Median of the 4 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Low cost, about $5 a month
“run most of the same apps there for less cost overall per month while knowing very little about how it all works”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?” “a $5 hetzner or digitalocean box with dokku/docker-compose is basically a superpower”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Do You Even Need a Database?” “A $5 DO droplet and a €4 Hetzner CX22 are both fine for a side project.”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner: From $1,432 to $233 With Zero Downtime” - Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “How to Scale a System from 0 to 10M+ Users”
- Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: A WordPress plugin that rewrites image URLs for near-zero-cost delivery”
- Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack”
- Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Migrating from Go to Rust”
Runs for years without trouble
“still host some things just fine with zero issues or friction or nagging at all”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Dear Heroku: Uhh What's Going On?” “Running a long time DO droplet with an ancient Ubuntu LTS, almost 10 years now.”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?” “I haven't rebooted my DO droplets in something like 5 years.”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “We moved Railway's front end off Next.js. Builds went from 10 minutes to under 2” - Comment from 7 Aug 2026 in “99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots”
Good base for self-hosted projects
“I don't think there is any extra value in paying more to a git hosting SaaS for a single user”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “It's not you; GitHub is down again” “a $5 hetzner or digitalocean box with dokku/docker-compose is basically a superpower”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Do You Even Need a Database?” “A $5 DO droplet and a €4 Hetzner CX22 are both fine for a side project.”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner: From $1,432 to $233 With Zero Downtime” - Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: Deployed vibecoded apps in prod at scale?”
Simple to manage over SSH
“a $5 hetzner or digitalocean box with dokku/docker-compose is basically a superpower”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Do You Even Need a Database?” “you save a lot, but it still convenient; you just SSH into the thing”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars” “Yes, that part was pretty easy”
Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Blacklisted or slow datacenter IP ranges
“on year 8 the entire /24 got blacklisted and it was game over”
Comment from 24 Jul 2026 in “Self-host your mail server” “datacenter IP ranges often made things slower or unusable”
Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved”
Other VPS hosts people recommend
The four most recommended other VPS hosts, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | 415 | 212 | 66% | 13 | 5 yrs40 owners | — |
| DigitalOcean | 133 | 117 | 53% | 12 | 10 yrs15 owners | — |
| exe.dev | 115 | 56 | 67% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Hetzner Cloud | 99 | 28 | 78% | 12 | 3 yrs8 owners | Approved |
| DigitalOcean DropletThis page | 19 | 5 | 79% | 8 | 10 yrs4 owners | Approved |
What people said
25 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I prefer to use Cloudflare pages/workers and a DigitalOcean droplet”
“I have a Digital Ocean VPS and my account is old enough to be grandfathered into the old policy, which means my email ports aren't blocked.”
“Running a long time DO droplet with an ancient Ubuntu LTS, almost 10 years now.”
“run most of the same apps there for less cost overall per month while knowing very little about how it all works”
“my static site has been just fine”
“on year 8 the entire /24 got blacklisted and it was game over”
“cram as much stuff onto my $4 DO droplets”
“I use Digital Ocean, but just the VPSs.”
“A $5 DO droplet and a €4 Hetzner CX22 are both fine for a side project.”
“even a DO droplet doesn't have the best guarantee”
“The DO droplet will live migrate to a healthy server.”
“a $5 hetzner or digitalocean box with dokku/docker-compose is basically a superpower”
“I use it to manage a pile of $5/mo droplets”
“I haven't rebooted my DO droplets in something like 5 years.”
“still host some things just fine with zero issues or friction or nagging at all”
“simply renting a VPS (a DO droplet is what, $6/m? $5/m?)”
“they are behind the times”
“I don't think there is any extra value in paying more to a git hosting SaaS for a single user”
“I put well over a few thousand users on a single $5/m DO droplet”
“Would love to see a slimmer tier closer to a DO droplet or Hetzner instance”
“This is a $10-$15 solution for 100+ WordPress sites.”
“Yes, that part was pretty easy”
“the DigitalOcean deoplet includes 500GB per month, which for me is absolutely limited”
“datacenter IP ranges often made things slower or unusable”
“you save a lot, but it still convenient; you just SSH into the thing”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.