DigitalOcean is a developer-friendly Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform known for its simplicity and reliability.
With Cloudways, you can easily deploy, manage, and scale high-performance applications on DigitalOcean’s powerful cloud servers, while enjoying the flexibility and convenience of our managed hosting platform.
By combining the Cloudways Managed Hosting experience with DigitalOcean’s robust infrastructure, you get fast performance, seamless scalability, and 24/7 expert support that acts as an extension of your team.
Table of Contents:
DigitalOcean Servers Lineup at Cloudways
Cloudways offers multiple DigitalOcean server types, designed to support a wide range of application needs—from simple websites to compute-intensive workloads.
DO Server Family Lineup
To deliver the best possible hosting experience, the DigitalOcean server lineup at Cloudways is divided into three main families
Basic Series
General Purpose Series
CPU-Optimized Series
Each server family is tailored for specific workloads. Choosing the right server type helps ensure your applications perform smoothly and efficiently.
Let’s explore what each DigitalOcean server family offers.
Basic Series
DigitalOcean Basic servers are ideal for everyday workloads and applications with moderate CPU usage.
These cost-effective instances are a great choice for simpler projects such as personal blogs, small business websites, test environments, or development sites.
Basic servers use shared CPUs and are backed by SSD storage for the Standard CPU type or NVMe storage for the Premium CPU type—offering faster data access compared to traditional disks.
Server Lineup
| Processor | Standard CPU Availability | Premium CPU Availability |
1GB | 1 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
2GB | 1 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
2GB | 2 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
4GB | 2 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
8GB | 4 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
16GB | 8 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
32GB | 8 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
48GB | 12 vCPU | Yes | No |
64GB | 16 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
96GB | 20 vCPU | Yes | No |
128GB | 24 vCPU | Yes | No |
192GB | 32 vCPU | Yes | No |
General Purpose Series
DigitalOcean General Purpose servers provide dedicated CPUs with a balanced memory-to-CPU ratio (4 GB RAM per vCPU).
These instances are ideal for resource-intensive applications, such as larger websites, business platforms, e-commerce stores, and production environments that require both consistent processing power and ample memory.
General Purpose servers also use SSD storage for the Standard CPU type or NVMe storage for the Premium CPU type—ensuring faster data access and smooth performance as your applications scale.
Server Lineup
| Processor | Standard CPU Availability | Premium CPU Availability |
8GB | 2 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
16GB | 4 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
32GB | 8 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
64GB | 16 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
128GB | 32 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
160GB | 40 vCPU | Yes | No |
192GB | 48 vCPU | No | Yes |
240GB | 60 vCPU | No | Yes |
CPU-Optimized Series
DigitalOcean CPU-Optimized servers are designed for applications with high processing demands.
These instances feature dedicated CPUs and a 2:1 memory-to-CPU ratio (2 GB RAM per vCPU), making them an excellent choice for compute-heavy workloads—such as large databases, complex web applications, data processing, and high-traffic e-commerce sites.
Like other DigitalOcean servers, CPU-Optimized instances use SSD storage for the Standard CPU type or NVMe storage for the Premium CPU type—ensuring fast and efficient data access for resource-intensive applications.
Server Lineup
| Processor | Standard CPU Availability | Premium CPU Availability |
4GB | 2 vCPU | Yes | No |
8GB | 4 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
16GB | 8 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
32GB | 16 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
64GB | 32 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
96GB | 48 vCPU | Yes | Yes |
120GB | 60 vCPU | No | Yes |
Benchmarks
We conducted performance benchmarks across different DigitalOcean server families on Cloudways to compare their processing power and webpage loading speed.
Note:
These benchmarks focus on CPU-intensive tests and may not fully reflect the balanced nature of General Purpose servers.
General Purpose instances are designed for applications that require both CPU power and memory bandwidth—making them ideal for use cases such as:
Magento 2 — which uses services like Elasticsearch, Redis, and RabbitMQ, increasing memory usage.
Laravel — depending on the setup, can benefit from balanced CPU and memory resources.
For such workloads, General Purpose servers often provide the best overall performance.
Benchmark Setup
We used the k6-wordpress-benchmarks methodology to test server performance. The benchmark simulates real user interactions—visiting pages, logging in, browsing, and loading assets—all with no caching enabled to reflect uncached performance.
Configuration:
WordPress App with k6 loadouts
Varnish: Disabled
Redis Object Caching: Disabled
Caching Plugins: Removed
Test Instances:
Basic Series — 8 vCPU / 16 GB RAM (Premium)
General Purpose Series — 8 vCPU / 16 GB RAM (Premium)
CPU-Optimized Series — 8 vCPU / 16 GB RAM (Premium)
Load Storm (k6) Benchmark Sequence:
Home Page: Simulates an initial visit to the home page
Login Page: Navigates to wp-login and submits stored credentials
Sitemap Pages: Iterates through URLs found in the sitemap
Asset Loading: Retrieves CSS, JS, and image assets, mimicking real user behavior
Note:
The test ramps from 1 to 1,000 users over 20 minutes, then holds at peak load for 10 minutes.
Key Metrics:
Total Requests — Total number of requests generated by k6
p95 — 95th percentile response time (ms)
Page Cum Avg — Average response time for HTML pages (ms)
Asset Cum Avg — Average response time for CSS, JS, and image assets (ms)
Login Cum Avg — Average response time for the wp-profile.php page (ms)
WP-Login Avg Response Time — Average response time for wp-login (including redirect validation)
Instance Type | Total Requests | Avg P95 (ms) | Page Cum Avg (ms) | Asset Cum Avg (ms) | Login Cum Avg (ms) | WP-Login Avg Time (ms) |
Basic Premium | 394437 | 4014 | 2378 | 486 | 2156 | 2000 |
General Purpose Premium | 272014 | 10486 | 6524 | 1071 | 6194 | 6000 |
CPU Optimized Premium | 464078 | 1638 | 954 | 298 | 818 | 651 |
Virtual Users: 1,000, Duration: 30 minutes, Cache Status: No-Cache
Discussion
The benchmark results show clear performance differences between the three DigitalOcean server types during a 30-minute, no-cache test with 1,000 virtual users:
CPU-Optimized Premium outperformed the other instances—handling the highest number of total requests (464,078) and delivering the lowest latency across all metrics (e.g., p95 at 1,638 ms).
Its optimized CPU resources manage high concurrency very efficiently, resulting in faster page loads and login times.Basic Premium performed moderately well with 394,437 total requests and average response times (e.g., p95 around 4,014 ms).
It can comfortably handle significant traffic but with slightly higher latency compared to CPU-Optimized instances.General Purpose Premium processed the fewest requests (272,014) and showed the highest latency (p95 at 10,486 ms).
While General Purpose servers provide a balanced CPU-to-memory ratio, they are not designed for heavy concurrent traffic, which affects response times in high-load scenarios.
Webpage Speed Benchmark
We also measured page load performance using WebPageTest, which simulates a full page load and captures how quickly different elements appear on the screen.
Results are recorded in seconds.
Key Metrics:
Time to First Byte (TTFB): When the server starts sending content to the browser
First Contentful Paint (FCP): When the first visible text or image appears
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): When the main content of the page finishes loading
Page Speed Benchmark — Configuration:
WordPress App with k6 loadouts
Varnish: Disabled
Redis Object Caching: Disabled
Caching Plugins: Removed
Data Center: London
WebPageTest Location: London
Instance Type | Time to First Byte | First Contentful Paint | Largest Contentful Paint |
Basic Standard | 0.301 | 0.531 | 0.599 |
Basic Premium | 0.312 | 0.607 | 0.664 |
General Purpose Standard | 0.252 | 0.545 | 0.612 |
General Purpose Premium | 0.235 | 0.454 | 0.519 |
CPU Optimized Standard | 0.249 | 0.524 | 0.594 |
CPU Optimized Premium | 0.248 | 0.523 | 0.588 |
Discussion
These results highlight how quickly each server type delivers and renders content during a light-load scenario:
Time to First Byte (TTFB): General Purpose Premium is the fastest (0.235s), while Basic Premium is the slowest (0.312s). A lower TTFB means faster initial server response.
First Contentful Paint (FCP): General Purpose Premium again performs best (0.454s), meaning visible page elements appear sooner for visitors.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): General Purpose Premium leads with a fast LCP (0.519s), while Basic Premium lags slightly behind (0.664s). A lower LCP indicates faster rendering of the main page content.
Launching a New Application on a DigitalOcean Server
Follow these steps to easily launch your preferred DigitalOcean server and deploy a new application through the Cloudways Platform.
Step #1 — Accessing the Cloudways Platform:
Log in to your Cloudways Platform using your credentials.
From the side menu bar, open My Servers.
Click Add Server.
Step #2 — Launching a New Server:
Select the application you want to deploy.
Assign a name to your application.
Provide a name for your server.
Specify your project (optional).
Select DigitalOcean as your infrastructure provider.
Choose your preferred server type
Choose your preferred server size.
Choose your preferred CPU type
Important:
For the best performance and lowest latency, choose a data center location that is closest to your target audience.
Step #3 — Choosing your Location:
Pick your server location from the list.
Finally, click Launch Now.
That’s it! Your new DigitalOcean server will be ready in a few minutes.
Tip:
New to Cloudways? If you already have an existing website, you can request a managed migration from our support team — or use the free Cloudways Migrator Plugin for WordPress sites.
Once your server and application are ready, be sure to follow the Take Site Live checklist to bring your website online.
Upgrading an Existing Server to a New DigitalOcean Server Family
If you’re already using a DigitalOcean server on Cloudways, you can easily upgrade to a higher-tier server type by using the Vertical Scaling feature.
If you’re currently hosting on a different cloud provider, you can clone your server to DigitalOcean in just a few clicks.
That’s it! We hope this article was useful.
Need Help?
If you need assistance, feel free to:
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