In a bid to deliver you the latest & greatest technology for even better performances on every level, we’re excited to announce that DigitalOcean’s Premium Droplets with faster Intel CPUs and NVMe SSDs are now available on the Cloudways Platform. With these Premium Droplets, you can expect better and faster performances at an entry-level price point.
Cloudways users have been requesting the addition of DO Premium Droplets to take advantage of Intel’s latest hardware to power their online presence since February 2021.
And after working round the clock to ensure a stable launch, you can now choose the new Premium Droplet from the Cloudways Platform with the same ease and convenience you’ve been familiar with for so long!
The Tech Behind Premium Droplets
These Intel Premium Droplets run on 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Cascade Lake architecture). The Intel Xeon processors are ‘disruptive by design’ and set new capabilities across compute, memory, security, and storage.
DO Premium Droplets have enhanced memory performance with 2933 MHz memory frequency, which significantly improves server-side cache workloads and in-memory databases. And as far as disk performance is concerned, these Premium Droplets use NVMe SSDs that deliver notably faster performance than regular SSDs and much lower latency.
But what does all that mean for you? Well, in short, if you’ve been satisfied with hosting your online dreams on Cloudways using DigitalOcean, the Premium Droplets will add even more oomph and capabilities to your arsenal.
We tested the Premium Droplets against some benchmarks to see how they perform on the Cloudways platform, so let’s look at the results.
The Cloudways Advantage
Let’s compare the performance of DO Premium Droplets on Cloudways and the DO native platform.
Before we start, let’s look at the configurations that we used and the stack we deployed on both platforms. On Cloudways, we have an optimized stack. On the native DO platform, we’ve deployed a LAMP stack.
We’ve performed the benchmarking on 4GB/2Core DO Premium Droplet and covered two different scenarios: a plain WordPress website and a big WooCommerce store.
Default/Simple WordPress Website
First, we installed a new WordPress application on both platforms and tested it on loader.io. Our loader configurations and other details were:
- Tested Pages: 1
- Test type: Maintain Client Load
- Clients: 0 to 1000
- Duration: 5 Mins
Cloudways DO Premium Droplet
The Cloudways optimized stack could easily handle a load of 1000 users for 5 mins. The slowest load time that we noticed was <300ms.
Native DO Premium Droplet
The slowest loading time we have noticed here is 6.7 secs, and for 270 concurrent users, the loading speed is <2 sec.
WooCommerce Store
We also created a real-life online store scenario and added 2500+ products, 100k+ orders, and many must-have WordPress plugins to a WooCommerce store. The web and database file sizes are in GBs, so it wouldn’t be wrong to call this a big WooCommerce store.
Our loader configurations and other details were:
- Tested Pages: 5
4 GET Requests and 1 POST Request - Test type: Maintain Client Load
- Clients: 0 to 150
- Duration: 5 Mins
Cloudways DO Premium Droplet
The Cloudways stack is designed with large and complex websites in mind. As you can see in the image below, the average response time is 5.1 seconds, and the success response counts are 21634.
Native DO Premium Droplet
The average response time is 21.3 secs, and the success response counts are 4905. It’s the same machine, but it’s pretty slow when you compare it to the Cloudways optimized stack.
Pricing
Of course, pricing plays a vital role in choosing the best server for your website. However, despite the addition of “Premium” Droplets, the accompanying price jump is not significantly higher.
For the smallest 1 GB server, you’re paying just $2 over the Basic Droplet for the new, faster tech.
| Server Size | DO Basic Droplet | DO Premium Droplet |
|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | $10 | $12 |
| 2 GB | $22 | $26 |
| 4 GB | $42 | $50 |
| 8 GB | $80 | $96 |
| 16 GB | $135 | $160 |
*Per month prices
So while the price gap between the Basic and Premium Droplets isn’t significant, you do get the additional server performance boost your app may need to reach to fulfill your vision!
Scaling From Basic to Premium DO Droplets
If you’re already hosting on a Basic DO Droplet on Cloudways, scaling to the Premium Droplets is as easy as moving a slider. Literally.
All you have to do is go to Vertical Scaling from the sidebar in the Cloudways Platform, move the slider to choose your Premium DO server size, and click on Scale Now!
And that’s it. There’ll be a warning prompt that you can get past by clicking Proceed, and you will be scaled to a faster and premium DO server!
Summing It Up
With the addition of DigitalOcean Premium Droplets, you can now host your apps on high-performing entry-level servers based on Intel’s latest Xeon infrastructure without paying a premium amount.
And as you can see, these DO Premium Droplets work even better on Cloudways, thanks to our highly optimized stack that adds even more performance on top of the premium machines.
In case you’re not a registered Cloudways user, you can take advantage of our free 3-day trial (without CC) and give DO Premium Droplets a try to see what the hype is all about. Also, check out the detailed comparison of DigitalOcean competitors to understand its advantages and disadvantages.
So go ahead and give your websites and other online properties the premium treatment without paying a premium price tag.
Owais Khan
Owais works as a Marketing Manager at Cloudways (managed hosting platform) where he focuses on growth, demand generation, and strategic partnerships. With more than a decade of experience in digital marketing and B2B, Owais prefers to build systems that help teams achieve their full potential.
