DigitalOcean vs SiteGround
One rents unmanaged Linux servers from $4 with RAM-graded tiers, root access and support sold as paid plans; the other sells visit-graded GBP packages bundling daily backups, CDN, email and migrations. What each approach includes, what it leaves unsaid, and where each fits, drawn from each host's captured pricing and feature pages.
DigitalOcean rents unmanaged Linux servers from $4, graded by RAM and billed per second, with root access and faster support sold as paid plans. SiteGround sells shared hosting in GBP, graded by approximate monthly visits, with daily backups, CDN, email and expert migrations bundled into every tier. The price lists never meet: USD infrastructure pricing against GBP package pricing ex VAT. Pick by the job you want, running the stack yourself or having it arrive running.
By Sam Moreton
Researched
Which one for your use case
| Use case | Pick |
|---|---|
| Developer who wants root, SSH and API or Terraform automation | DigitalOcean |
| Owner who wants backups, CDN, email and migrations inside the plan price | SiteGround |
| Team that wants phone and chat support with no separate support bill | SiteGround |
| Spiky or disposable workloads that suit per-second billing | DigitalOcean |
| Buyer who needs a stated uptime SLA on the page | DigitalOcean |
Testing overlap: Each side comes from its own captured pricing, plan and support pages, checked November 2026 for DigitalOcean and October 2026 for SiteGround; nothing here rests on a hands-on trial or a measured benchmark.
What the captured pages state, side by side
From the per-host feature audit, checked through 2026-11-04. Cells carry the date their source page was captured; gaps render as not stated rather than guessed.
| Dimension | DigitalOcean | SiteGround |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price (cheapest published plan, trials excluded) | $4 per month (Basic 512 MiB) Checked 2026-11-04. | £13.99 per month (StartUp; £1.99 per month first-invoice price) Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Trial | Not stated on the captured DigitalOcean pages. | Not stated on the captured SiteGround pages. |
| Apps | Pre-configured 1-Click Apps for LAMP, Docker, WordPress and more; you are charged for the underlying compute. Full choice of Linux distributions (Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, CoreOS) and custom images. Checked 2026-11-04. | Free installation of WordPress or other CMS through the setup wizard; free shopping-cart install for ecommerce, or the all-inclusive SiteGround Ecommerce option. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Staging | Not stated on the captured DigitalOcean pages. | Staging is listed as a GrowBig exclusive feature; GoGeek lists staging with Git. Not listed for StartUp. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Backups | Paid extra, not included: disk images of Droplets created automatically; percentage-based plans set at 20% of Droplet cost (weekly) or 30% (daily), usage-based plans start at $0.01/GiB per month with frequencies up to every 4 hours and retention from 3 days to 6 months. You can choose daily or weekly and customize the backup window; automatic backups can be converted into snapshots to keep them indefinitely; backups cannot be downloaded. Checked 2026-11-04. | Automated daily backups free on every plan; on-demand backups on GrowBig and GoGeek. Retention is not stated. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Migrations | Self-service only: the support FAQ states there are guides to help you migrate your data from your previous provider. No managed migration service is stated on the captured pages. Checked 2026-11-04. | Free site migrations: an automatic migrator for WordPress sites or transfer by SiteGround experts, with the site stated to stay live throughout; a free email migrator is also included. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| CDN | No CDN is included with Droplets. The captured products page states a built-in CDN only inside Spaces Object Storage, a separate product ('S3-compatible Spaces Object Storage with a built-in CDN to minimize page load times'). Checked 2026-11-04. | Free CDN with every site on all plans; the web hosting page states the built-in CDN serves content from the nearest location. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Vertical scaling | Resize a Droplet to a larger plan; Droplets cannot be resized to smaller plans, but you can migrate your data to a smaller Droplet. Checked 2026-11-04. | Not stated on the captured SiteGround pages. |
| Horizontal scaling | Scale horizontally with many Droplets across globally distributed data centers, each with the 99.99% uptime SLA. Load Balancers are listed as a separate tool to distribute traffic across a group of Droplets. Checked 2026-11-04. | Not stated on the captured SiteGround pages. |
| Control panel | DigitalOcean control panel: create a Droplet in a few clicks, choose OS, plan and datacenter region, up and running in under a minute. No hosting control panel is included; you can install cPanel and WHM yourself on AlmaLinux, Rocky and Ubuntu Droplets. Checked 2026-11-04. | Site Tools: each site gets its own panel to manage, share access to and switch between sites independently; domain, email, website and backups are managed from one dashboard. Free SSH and SFTP access; WP-CLI is listed under the WordPress services. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Team features | Team management: collaborate on projects with unlimited users, two-factor authentication, and all projects on a single bill; team collaboration is built into DigitalOcean from sign-up. Checked 2026-11-04. | Collaborators included on every plan (web hosting page feature lists); white-label access and a free private DNS are GoGeek exclusives; the full feature list adds 'Ship Site to Client' under agency and designer features. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Support channels | support tickets via the support portal, email support. Paid: Developer ($24 per month: support tickets via the support portal, email support); Standard ($99 per month: support tickets via the support portal, email support, live chat in the support portal, 24/7); Premium ($999 per month: support tickets via the support portal, email support, live chat in the support portal, 24/7, dedicated Slack channel during business hours, staffed by your Solution Architect, video calls). Checked 2026-11-04. | phone, chat, tickets. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Benchmarks | Not tested by Kite: no benchmark runs exist yet (see the methodology). | Not tested by Kite: no benchmark runs exist yet (see the methodology). |
What the published data says
- Entry prices are published in different currencies (DigitalOcean USD, SiteGround GBP), so no cheaper-side claim is made: converting between them would need an exchange rate this audit does not hold. DigitalOcean: $4 per month (Basic 512 MiB); SiteGround: £13.99 per month (StartUp; £1.99 per month first-invoice price) (checked 2026-11-04 / 2026-10-11).
- DigitalOcean sells support escalation above the standard tier: Developer at $24 per month, Standard at $99 per month, Premium at $999 per month (2026-11-04).
- SiteGround publishes ~10,000 visits/month/~100,000 visits/month/~400,000 visits/month visits (as of 2026-10-11); the captured pages state no overage billing policy.
DigitalOcean: what the captured pages do not state, and the sources
- Staging environments are not stated anywhere on the captured pages; the products page only calls cloud firewalls 'perfect for staging and production deployments', which is not a staging feature for sites.
- No CDN is included with Droplets; the only CDN statement on the captured pages is the built-in CDN of Spaces Object Storage, a separate product whose pricing was not captured.
- No managed WordPress or application-level managed layer: the FAQ states Droplets are IaaS and the core offering is unmanaged, you manage the operating system, applications and data.
- No managed migration service is stated; the support FAQ references self-serve guides for migrating data from a previous provider only.
- No free trial is stated: the pricing FAQ says DigitalOcean often provides promotional credits for new users, with no amount or duration stated.
- App Platform is referenced on the pricing page (build and deploy 3 static sites for free) but its pricing was not captured, so no App Platform plans are entered.
- Managed Databases, GPU Droplets, Kubernetes, Functions, Spaces, Load Balancers, Volumes and other navigation products were not captured and are not audited here.
- The 99.99% SLA figure is stated, but the SLA's compensation or service-credit terms are not on the captured pages (the docs navigation links a separate Service-Level Agreements page that was not captured).
- Retention for percentage-based backups (20% weekly or 30% daily) is not stated; only the usage-based range of 3 days to 6 months is stated.
- v5 Droplets publish no tier table on the captured page, only workload examples with starting hourly rates; no fixed-price v5 plans are entered.
- Team roles, permissions and per-resource access controls are not detailed on the captured pages, only unlimited users, two-factor authentication and single-bill projects.
- The support FAQ states DigitalOcean support plans do not apply to Cloudways or Paperspace and that each team needs its own plan; the relationship between DigitalOcean and Cloudways is otherwise not described on the captured pages.
- The main pricing page's per-product pricing tables did not render in the text capture; only its global pricing bullets and FAQ were captured, Droplet pricing was captured on the dedicated Droplets pricing page instead.
- Datacenter lists differ between captured pages: the products page includes Memphis, the Droplets pricing FAQ list does not.
- The support FAQ states an unlimited number of domains and websites can be served from one Droplet, but no captured page states a visit figure or any metering, so plans carry RAM/disk/transfer only and no visit claim.
- Budget-Friendly Cloud Server Pricing | DigitalOcean, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- Droplet Pricing | DigitalOcean, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- DigitalOcean Droplets | Scalable Cloud Compute Starting at $4/mo, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- Support Plans | DigitalOcean Documentation, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
- Support Home | DigitalOcean Documentation, DigitalOcean (checked 2026-11-04)
SiteGround: what the captured pages do not state, and the sources
- No server resources (RAM or CPU) are stated for any shared plan: tiers are graded by approximate monthly visits, storage and feature set, so no like-for-like RAM anchor exists against RAM-graded hosts.
- Backup retention (how long daily backups are kept) is not stated.
- Visit allowances are stated as approximate ('~10,000 visits'); no overage, throttling or upgrade policy for exceeding them is stated.
- All captured prices are from the UK regional site (siteground.co.uk) in GBP, excluding VAT; the captured pages state no monthly (non-prepaid) term prices and no other region's pricing.
- No free trial is stated on the captured pages; the stated risk-free mechanism is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- No separately priced add-ons are stated on the captured pages, so the add-on list is empty by evidence, not by assumption.
- An uptime SLA or guarantee is not stated.
- SiteGround's navigation lists Cloud Hosting, Reseller Hosting and WordPress/WooCommerce product lines; only the shared Web Hosting line was captured, so this audit covers that line only.
- Node.js application hosting is not documented on the captured pages: a blog headline dated 01 Oct 2026 announces it, but the captured feature lists do not include it.
- Staging is not listed for StartUp: the web hosting page ties staging to GrowBig (staging + Git to GoGeek) as exclusive features, while the full feature list shows staging without a per-plan split.
- Datacentre presence is summarised as 'servers on four continents'; no region choice per plan or customer is stated.
- Support response-time guarantees are not stated.
- Web Hosting Crafted For Top Website Performance & Speed - SiteGround, SiteGround (checked 2026-10-11)
- SiteGround Web Hosting Plans - Full Feature List, SiteGround (checked 2026-10-11)
Open this comparison in the interactive tool to swap either side for any of the other audited hosts.
DigitalOcean and SiteGround sit at opposite ends of the same shelf. DigitalOcean rents Linux servers and hands you the root password; SiteGround sells hosted websites and keeps the server out of sight. One bills in US dollars for infrastructure you assemble and run, the other in pounds for a package that arrives with backups, CDN, email and migrations already inside it. Everything here traces to the two audits, DigitalOcean checked November 2026 and SiteGround checked October 2026, and the honest headline is that the price lists cannot be compared number to number, only shape to shape.
A server or a website
The smallest Droplet is a Linux machine with 512 MiB of RAM, 10 GB of disk and 500 GiB of monthly transfer for $4 per month, checked November 2026. The Basic line then climbs by memory: $6 at 1 GiB, $12 at 2 GiB, $18 for 2 GiB with a second vCPU, $24 at 4 GiB, disk and transfer rising alongside. Nothing meters visits. The vendor FAQ states one Droplet can serve an unlimited number of websites, and transfer is the resource that bills, at $0.01 per GiB beyond what the plan includes.
SiteGround grades its shared tiers the opposite way, by approximate monthly visits. StartUp allows about 10,000 visits and one website for £13.99 per month, GrowBig about 100,000 visits and unlimited websites for £23.99, GoGeek about 400,000 for £34.99, checked October 2026 on the UK site, excluding VAT. The £1.99, £3.99 and £5.99 introductory prices apply only to the first invoice of a prepaid 12-month term, with regular prices at renewal, and transfer is unmetered on all three.
Two price lists that refuse to meet
A direct price comparison fails before it starts, and the reason deserves stating. DigitalOcean quotes USD; SiteGround's captured pages are the UK regional site in GBP excluding VAT. Converting one to the other would add an exchange rate and a tax treatment the audits do not support, so this article refuses, and the audit table carries each currency exactly as captured. The units refuse just as firmly: RAM, disk and transfer on one side, visits, websites and feature bundles on the other. A converted £13.99 set beside $4 would look like two hosting prices and would actually be a managed website package against half a gigabyte of unmanaged memory.
Billing posture points in different directions too. Droplets bill per second with a 60-second minimum, effective 1 January 2026, and bundled plans cap at the flat monthly price; SiteGround's captured prices assume a 12-month prepay, and no monthly term price appears on the captured pages. The exits are opposites: DigitalOcean offers no refunds, SiteGround a 30-day money-back guarantee on every plan.
What a Droplet leaves you to build
The DigitalOcean audit's gaps describe the product as faithfully as its feature list. No staging environment is stated anywhere on the captured pages. No CDN ships with Droplets; the only CDN mentioned belongs to Spaces Object Storage, a separate product. Migrations come as self-service guides, not a service. Backups are a paid extra, 20% of Droplet cost for weekly or 30% for daily, or usage-based from $0.01 per GiB. SMTP is blocked outright, so email means a third-party provider. There is no hosting control panel, though you can install cPanel and WHM yourself.
What you get in exchange is the point: root over SSH, management by CLI, API and Terraform, free cloud firewalls, free DNS, monitoring and alerts at no cost, snapshots at $0.06 per GB per month, resizing upward, scale out across data centres including London, and a stated 99.99% uptime SLA, whose compensation terms are not on the captured pages. The server is yours, and so is everything on it.
What SiteGround states it includes
SiteGround's bundle reads like the mirror image of that gap list. Automated daily backups sit on every plan, with on-demand backups from GrowBig up. A free CDN serves every site. Email accounts at your own domain are included. Migrations are free, handled either by an automatic WordPress migrator or by SiteGround's team, with the site stated to stay live throughout, and a free email migrator comes alongside. A domain, SSL and multilevel caching are in the plan price, collaborators are on every tier, with white-label access and private DNS reserved for GoGeek, and Site Tools gives each site its own panel with SSH, SFTP and WP-CLI.
Staging is tier-gated: a GrowBig exclusive, joined by Git on GoGeek, and not listed for StartUp. The unstated parts matter as much. No RAM or CPU figure appears for any plan, backup retention is not stated, the visit allowances carry no published overage policy, and no uptime SLA or support response-time guarantee appears on the captured pages.
Support, bundled against priced
SiteGround includes phone, chat and tickets around the clock on every plan and states no paid support tier. DigitalOcean's included support is tickets and email with responses under 24 hours; everything faster is a purchase. The Developer plan at $24 per month buys responses under 8 hours, Standard at $99 adds 24/7 chat and a 2-hour target, and Premium at $999 per month brings a 30-minute target, a Slack channel and video calls, with response times tied to plan level rather than issue severity. If a phone line in the base price is the requirement, SiteGround states it and DigitalOcean does not sell it at any tier; if a response time in writing is the requirement, DigitalOcean sells exactly that and SiteGround publishes none.
Where each one wins
DigitalOcean for developers and teams who want root, who define infrastructure in Terraform or drive it by API, whose workloads are spiky or disposable enough to suit per-second billing, and who want a London data centre and a stated SLA. SiteGround for owners and small teams who want daily backups, a CDN, email, expert migrations and a phone line inside one predictable GBP bill, and who would rather never learn what a firewall rule is.
If the management question lands somewhere between the two, Cloudways vs DigitalOcean covers what paying a manager over the same infrastructure buys, and Cloudways vs SiteGround sets the managed generalist against SiteGround's bundles. The hosting comparison tool lines either host up with the rest of the audited set under the same citation rules.
FAQ
Is DigitalOcean cheaper than SiteGround?
DigitalOcean looks cheaper on raw numbers, and the comparison does not survive past them. A Basic Droplet starts at $4 per month, checked November 2026; SiteGround's StartUp lists at £13.99 per month, £1.99 on the first invoice of a prepaid 12-month term, checked October 2026 excluding VAT. Different currencies, different tax treatments and different products: unmanaged server RAM against a hosted website with backups, CDN, email and migrations included.
Can you host WordPress on a DigitalOcean Droplet?
Yes; 1-Click Apps include WordPress, and the vendor FAQ states one Droplet can serve an unlimited number of websites. What does not arrive is the managed layer. The audit records no staging feature, no CDN with Droplets, no managed migration service and paid-only backups, and Droplets are explicitly unmanaged, with the operating system, applications and data your responsibility.
What happens if a SiteGround site exceeds its visit allowance?
SiteGround states approximate allowances, roughly 10,000 monthly visits on StartUp, 100,000 on GrowBig and 400,000 on GoGeek, but publishes no overage rate, throttling or forced-upgrade policy on the captured pages. What happens at the boundary is a question for their support team rather than a fact on the page.
Does either host include email?
SiteGround does: free email accounts on every plan, stated as unlimited at your own domain with spam protection and webmail. DigitalOcean blocks SMTP traffic on Droplets to prevent spam and points you at third-party email services instead.
Which suits someone who does not manage servers?
SiteGround, by fit. Its tiers bundle the daily backups, CDN, migrations and patching that a Droplet owner assembles by hand, support runs phone, chat and tickets on every plan, and a 30-day money-back guarantee covers the first month. A Droplet expects a sysadmin, and the audit assigns the operating system, applications and data to you in those words.