Alibaba Cloud vs DigitalOcean

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We have tested 5 VPS plans from Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean. We'll show which one is best based on a detailed performance analysis, on features and prices.


Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba

Alibaba Cloud was founded as a VPS provider in 2009.
It is headquartered in China.
It offers VPS, Database, Storage and Networking hosting products.

It has datacenters in:
  • Australia
  • China
  • Germany
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Japan
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Singapore
  • South Korea
  • Thailand
  • United Arab Emirates
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

DigitalOcean

DOcean

DigitalOcean was founded as a VPS provider in 2012.
It is headquartered in the USA.
It offers VPS, Database, Storage and Networking hosting products.

It has datacenters in:
  • Canada
  • Germany
  • India
  • Netherlands
  • Singapore
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

VPS Plans

Plan Name Monthly Price CPU cores Memory (GB) Disk Space (GB) Data Transfer (GB) Latest trial
Basic Regular 4GB 2 cores $24.00 2 4.0 80 4000 Apr 03 2023
Basic Premium AMD 4GB 2cores $28.00 2 4.0 80 4000 Oct 14 2022
ecs.c6e.large $41.32 2 4.0 40 0 Jan 02 2023
CPU Optimized 4GB $47.00 2 4.0 50 4000 Jan 24 2024
ecs.c7a.large $58.32 2 4.0 40 0 Oct 16 2023

Compare specs for all plans from all providers

Performance Grades

To summarize the performance of each VPS plan, we generated grades based on the various tests that were run: web, sysbench, endurance and remote timing tests. Each grade focuses on one aspect of the VPS speed or stability (cpu, disk IO, network IO...) and is made of one or more metrics measured during the tests.

Grades are evenly distributed between A and F. A is best, F is worst.

Follow the letter links to find the test results backing the grade.

How are grades calculated?

Screen all VPS from Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean
Plan Name Web Perf Raw CPU Power Perf Stability Disk IO Perf Network Perf
Basic Regular 4GB 2 cores
$24.00
E D E D C
Basic Premium AMD 4GB 2cores
$28.00
E D D C C
ecs.c6e.large
$41.32
C D C F F
CPU Optimized 4GB
$47.00
D E E E C
ecs.c7a.large
$58.32
C D B F F
Show Price Weighted Grades   

Features and Datacenters

This list is a subset of the features each provider may offer.

DigitalOcean Alibaba Cloud
Backups  Yes Yes
Block storage  Yes Yes
Object storage  Yes Yes
Load balancer  Yes Yes
DDoS protection  No Yes
Hourly Billing  Yes Mixed
SSH Keys Setup  Yes Yes
Total Number of Datacenters  12 24
Number of Datacenter Continents  3 4
Compare more Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean Features

CPUs

These are the CPUs we have seen in Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean instances in the past 18 months.

Alibaba Cloud DigitalOcean
All Alibaba Cloud CPUs by plan All DigitalOcean CPUs by plan
AMD EPYC 7T83 64-Core Processor
Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8269CY CPU @ 2.50GHz
DO-Premium-AMD
DO-Regular
Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8168 CPU @ 2.70GHz

Performance Consistency

The provider consistency score shows how much variation can be expected between 2 servers of the same type at the same provider. A high consistency score (>65) means the performance of all servers of the provider is consistent over many trials and many plans.

Providers who don't have enough data yet at VPSBenchmarks don't have a consistency score.

Alibaba Cloud DigitalOcean
Consistency Score 45 50

Screenshots


VPS Instance Provisioning Time

This is the average time it took to create an instance for Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean from instance order to instance accepting connections.

All VPS provisioning times

Alibaba Cloud DigitalOcean
Number of instance creations in sample 2 3
Average provisioning time 45s 41s

Performance in Depth...

These are some of the test results that are used to determine the grades above.

Web Response Times

We ran a database intensive web application at various levels of load on cloud servers from Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean. This is the average response time measured locally on the VPS for each plan we tested.



Local Response Time per Plan

Lower is better


Maximum HTTP Load

We ran a database intensive web application at various levels of load on cloud servers from Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean. This is the maximum rate of HTTP requests that each server handled without timing out.



Maximum HTTP request rate

Higher is better


During the Web Test, we collect response time metrics, rate metrics and CPU metrics. All of those are measured locally on the VPS running the web server. All metrics can be compared on the Web Performance Comparison page.

Sysbench CPU Performance

We ran the full suite of Sysbench tests on VPS plans of Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean. These are the Sysbench CPU test results:



Rate of operations

Higher is better


Sysbench Disk IO Performance

We ran the full suite of Sysbench tests on VPS plans of Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean. These are the Sysbench Disk IO Random Read test results:



Rate of operations

Higher is better

Sysbench test results are also available for random disk IO tests, sequential disk IO tests and memory tests.
Review and compare all Sysbench numbers on the Sysbench Comparison page for Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean.

Network Transfers

We have performed large file transfers from the Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean VPS and we measured the speed of downloads and uploads.

The transfers involve multiple files, 10 threads and last for at least 10 seconds at maximum speed. The transfers are repeated 3 times from different servers and only the fastest transfer is reported here.


Download Speed per Plan

Higher is better

Network Transfers measurements including download and upload speeds can be compared for Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean on the Network Transfers Comparison page.

Sustained CPU Endurance Tests

We pushed the CPU of those VPS plans hard for 24 hours straight.

This test shows how fast the VPS can go for long periods of time, how stable the performance is and it also gives clues on how overallocated the VPSs may be.

Throughput variations of the endurance test over 24 hours. The coefficient of variation is the standard deviation of the test throughput divided by its average value. Low variations mean that resources allocated to the server were stable for the duration of the test and there was little contention.


Ops/hour coefficient of variation

Lower is better

Review and compare endurance test results for Alibaba Cloud and DigitalOcean on the Sustained CPU Endurance Comparison page.

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