DigitalOcean
 The DigitalOcean logo | |
Type of site | Cloud hosting provider |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | DigitalOcean, Inc. |
| Created by | Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky, Jeff Carr, Mitch Wainer |
| URL | www.digitalocean.com |
| Launched | 24 June 2011 |
| Current status | Active |
DigitalOcean is an American virtual private server provider based in New York City, New York. The company leases capacity from existing datacenters, including sites in New York, Amsterdam, San Francisco, London and Singapore.
History
DigitalOcean was formed in 2011 by Ben and Moisey Uretsky.[1] With prior experience in the managed hosting industry, the brothers wanted to create a product that simplified the complexities of web infrastructure and put a greater emphasis on user experience.[1] Mitch Wainer joined the co-founding team in March of 2012, by then composed of the Uretsky brothers, Jeff Carr, and Alec Hartman, to lead the company’s marketing efforts.[2]
In 2012, DigitalOcean was accepted into the TechStars accelerator program.[3]
Shortly after, it obtained its first round of seed funding from IA Ventures.[4] In December 2013, Netcraft released a report that detailed DigitalOcean’s growth as the world’s fastest growing cloud hosting service, surpassing Amazon Web Services in number of web-facing computers.[5] The report states, “Our December 2013 Web Server Survey showed a month-on-month gain of 6,514 web-facing computers,” adding “DigitalOcean is now the 15th largest hosting company in terms of web-facing computers.”[6]
In July 2014, DigitalOcean surpassed Rackspace as the fifth largest hosting provider in the world.[7]
Features
DigitalOcean claims that its “Droplets,” its branded term for cloud servers, can typically be provisioned in 55 seconds.[8] The company also provides SSD hard drives and KVM virtualization.
DigitalOcean Community
DigitalOcean currently offers a Community resource, which provides developer-to-developer forums and tutorials on open source and sysadmin topics. As of August 2014, the Community resource receives 2 million visitors per month and has more than 800 vetted tutorials.[9]
API V2
On June 24, 2014, Digital Ocean's second version of their API ('API V2') launched in a BETA version. The new API is RESTful, uses oAuth, and supports IPv6.[10]
IPv6
IPv6 was introduced to the Singapore location (SGP1), on June 16, 2014.[11] On July 15, 2014, DigitalOcean released a new location, London (LON1), which had IPv6 at launch.[12]
Growth
In early 2013, TechCrunch featured DigitalOcean following their graduation from TechStars and the company's switch to SSD servers.[13] After the article, DigitalOcean began adding 100-150 users per day, up from their previous 5-10 users per day.
As a result of this growth, DigitalOcean closed a $3.2 million seed round in August 2013, led by IA Ventures.[14][15]
Shortly thereafter, it opened its first European and Asian datacenters, located in Amsterdam and Singapore, respectively.[16][17]
In December 2013, DigitalOcean hosted more new web-facing servers than Amazon AWS by more than 200, according to Netcraft.[6] It also hosted beyonce.com during the artist's recent album release, which went online first.[2] In March 2014, DigitalOcean raised $37.2 million in a series A funding, led by venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz.[18]
DigitalOcean now has more than 100 employees and serves more than 160,000 users.[3] It currently adds 1,000 new users per day.[3] As of August 8, 2014, DigitalOcean overtook Rackspace to become the fifth largest public-facing host, growing 850 percent in the last year.
Reception
Forbes wrote that “DigitalOcean’s differentiator is simplicity” and “DigitalOcean focuses on the developers and provides an easy to use interface that abstracts away the underlying complexities of the infrastructure, thus allowing developers to get the job done faster.”[1] eWeek mentioned that DigitalOcean “has the easiest to understand pricing model.”[19]
DigitalOcean has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Business Insider, and others.[1][13][18][2]
References
- ^ a b c d Reich, Dan. "Startup CEO: Ben Uretsky on Launching Digital Ocean, Raising Money And Joining TechStars". Forbes.
- ^ a b c BORT, JULIE. "These Guys Met On Craigslist And 2 Years Later Their Startup Raised $37 Million And Is Threatening Amazon". Business Insider.
- ^ a b c Lardinois, Frederic. "Digital Ocean's Journey From TechStars Reject To Cloud-Hosting Darling". TechCrunch.
- ^ Farr, Christina. "Developer favorite Digital Ocean nabs $3.2M for its cloud hosting service". VentureBeat.
- ^ Novet, Jordan. "DigitalOcean's cloud surpasses Amazon Web Services in one category". VentureBeat.
- ^ a b Mutton, Paul. "DigitalOcean now growing faster than Amazon". NetCraft.
- ^ "DigitalOcean - Growth". Netcraft.
- ^ "Digital Ocean -- Technology". DigitalOcean.
- ^ Dillet, Romain. "DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz To Take On AWS". TechCrunch.
- ^ "API v2.0 Enters Public Beta". DigitalOcean.
- ^ "DigitalOcean Cloud Expands In Europe, Asia". Information Week.
- ^ Kepes, Ben. "DigitalOcean Bucks All The Cloud Hosting Rules - New "London" Facility Included". Forbes.
- ^ a b Dillet, Romain. "TechStars Graduate DigitalOcean Switches To SSD For Its $5 Per Month VPS To Take On Linode And Rackspace". TechCrunch.
- ^ GUTHRIE WEISSMAN, CALE. "Digital Ocean raises $3.2M, stakes its claim on developer-friendly cloud hosting". PandoDaily.
- ^ "Techstars Grad Takes on the Cloud Space". Bloomberg.
- ^ Lardinois, Frederic. "DigitalOcean Expands In Europe With New Amsterdam Data Center, Singapore Coming Next". TechCrunch.
- ^ "DigitalOcean Cloud Expands In Europe, Asia". Information Week.
- ^ a b ALDEN, WILLIAM. "Andreessen Horowitz Backs DigitalOcean, a Cloud Computing Start-Up". New York Times.
- ^ Lundquist, Eric. "Five Trends Show Why Cloud Computing Is Far From Mature". eWeek.