DigitalOcean vs ScalaHosting
Both ladders below were read from the vendors’ own pricing pages, in this market, on the dates shown. Nothing is converted: what you see is what each page showed a reader here.
What each one is
DigitalOceansite ↗pricing ↗
Cloud infrastructure aimed at developers and small teams, priced simply against the larger clouds. Paid plans start at $4/mo (Droplets); a free plan exists. The ladder we hold runs 7 paid tiers, topping out at $15/mo (Managed Databases).
ScalaHostingsite ↗pricing ↗
A hosting company selling managed VPS with its own control panel instead of cPanel. Paid plans start at $2.95/mo (Mini); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 4 paid tiers, topping out at $14.95/mo (Entry Cloud). We read the same $2.95/mo in every market we check, so this vendor does not price by country. It quotes USD here rather than local currency, so your bank sets the conversion.
The two ladders
DigitalOceansite ↗pricing ↗
read 2026-09-06 · USD
| Plan | Price | What the page says |
|---|---|---|
| Droplets | $4/mo | 'Starting at $4 /month'. Per-second billing with a 60-second minimum, 'or $0.01, whichever is higher'. |
| Kubernetes | $12/mo | 'Starting at $12 /month'. Managed Kubernetes. |
| App Platform | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. Fully-managed infrastructure. |
| Functions | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. Serverless computing. |
| Managed Databases | $15/mo | 'Starting at $15 /month'. |
| Cloudways Managed Hosting | $11/mo | 'Starting at $11 /month'. |
| Spaces (object storage) | $5/mo | 'Starting at $5 /month'. |
| Volumes (block storage) | $10/mo | 'Starting at $10 /month'. |
| Network File Storage | Custom | 'Starting at $0.15 /per GiB/month'. |
| Load Balancers | $12/mo | 'Starting at $12 /month'. |
| Container Registry | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. |
| Virtual Private Cloud | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. |
| Uptime monitoring | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. |
| Support Plans | Free | 'Starting at $0 /month'. Unlimited tickets on the free tier. |
| GPU Droplets | Custom | 'Starting at $1.91 /GPU/hour* — based on multi-month contractual commitment. On-demand pricing from $0.76 /GPU/hour.' |
| AI/ML Inference | Custom | 'Starting at $0.05 /M tokens'. |
ScalaHostingsite ↗pricing ↗
read 2026-09-07 · USD
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Mini | $2.95/mo |
| Turbo-fast NVMe SSD | $5.95/mo |
| Advanced | $9.95/mo |
| Entry Cloud | $14.95/mo |
Where they differ
- Cheapest way in: ScalaHosting at $2.95/mo, against DigitalOcean at $4/mo. That is the entry price in this market on the dates shown, not a judgement about which suits you.
- Free plans: only DigitalOcean publishes one — a plan priced at zero, not a trial.
- How far each ladder goes: DigitalOcean tops out at $15/mo, ScalaHosting at $14.95/mo. A deeper ladder is not a worse deal — it is a bill that keeps climbing if you keep growing.
- ScalaHosting: We read the same $2.95/mo in every market we check, so this vendor does not price by country. It quotes USD here rather than local currency, so your bank sets the conversion.
How to choose in this category
- Match the tier to the sites and storage you actually use — the levels here divide on resources, not features.
- Introductory terms in this set run one to four years; a lower monthly figure often buys a longer lock-in.
- Every row links the host’s own pricing page. Open it and read the renewal line before you commit to a term.