Comparing DigitalOcean vs. HostEurope as VPS hosting providers (2025)

DigitalOcean is an American cloud service provider headquartered in New York City. The company operates 15 globally distributed data centers and offers cloud infrastructure services primarily to developers, startups, and small to medium-sized businesses. It is known for its VPS offerings, Kubernetes-based container services, and serverless computing solutions.

Founded in 2012, DigitalOcean emerged from the TechStars startup accelerator and grew rapidly, becoming one of the first cloud-hosting providers to offer SSD-based virtual machines in 2013. The company expanded internationally, opened multiple data centers, and acquired several companies, including Nimbella, CSS-Tricks, and Cloudways. DigitalOcean went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 and continues to expand its infrastructure and product offerings, including GPU-based computing for AI workloads.

The Host Europe Group Ltd., based in Hayes, England, is a hosting provider acquired by GoDaddy in April 2017. Founded in 1997, the company operated under different names in its early years and became one of Europe's largest privately owned hosting providers. It managed over 5 million domains and offered web hosting, cloud solutions, and SaaS services across multiple brands in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, and Spain.

The company changed ownership multiple times, including sales to Montagu Private Equity in 2010 and Cinven in 2013. Through acquisitions, it expanded its market presence, notably purchasing domainfactory GmbH in 2013 and Intergenia in 2014. In 2015, Host Europe relocated dedicated and virtual servers to a data center in Strasbourg, leading to customer concerns about data privacy. GoDaddy completed the acquisition of Host Europe Group for €