Recs.
Updated
- Virtualization: KVM
- Linux servers: Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, CoreOS
- Non-Linux servers: FreeBSD
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Good API
DigitalOcean has an API for creating and destroying droplets and replicating droplet control panel functionality. The API is RESTful, uses oAuth, supports IPv6 and comes with an extensive documentation.
Pro Great customer support
Quick and knowledgeable customer service, extensive documentation and helpful community.
Pro Beginner-friendly
DigitalOcean has a control panel that's intuitive and easy to use, new servers (Droplets) can be spun up in under a minute and they offer stock "apps" (LAMP, RoR, Wordpress) that can be deployed instantly. There's also an extensive documentation for people new to VPS.
Cons
Con You have to set up your architecture
While this has vastly improved with the introduction of block storage (encrypted replicated, network attached storage), "spaces" (object storage), load-balancers, etc... there is still a lot a developer would miss coming from such complete ecosystems as AWS, Azure, or GAE. It's not uncommon to set up your own backups, fail-over, load-balancers, orchestration/scaling, distributed storage, distributed database. etc. For those comfortable with orchestration this is fine, and the prices of droplets are low. However there are new users who don't seem to understand that the responsibility for orchestrating availability, backups, recovery, etc. is on the user.
Con Don't accept Bitcoin yet
Even though it's one of the most voted suggestions on their customer feedback website, DigitalOcean does not accept any crypto-currency payment methods.
Recommendations
Comments
Out of Date Pros + Cons
Con No load balancing solution yet
Work on load balancing was announced January 11th, 2015.