Hetzner vs DigitalOcean
I run my SaaS products on Hetzner. I've used DigitalOcean before. Both work fine for indie SaaS — but the pricing difference is hard to ignore.
Quick Comparison
| Hetzner | DigitalOcean | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | ~$4.50/month (CX23) | ~$4/month (Basic Droplet) |
| 4 vCPU / 8GB RAM | ~$14/month | ~$48/month |
| Data centers | Germany, Finland, US, Singapore | US, EU, UK, Singapore, India, Australia |
| Block storage | $0.052/GB/month | $0.10/GB/month |
| Bandwidth | Up to 20TB included (varies by location) | 4-6TB included |
| Managed databases | No | Yes |
| Managed Kubernetes | No | Yes (DOKS) |
| App Platform (PaaS) | No | Yes |
| Company | German, privately held since 1997 | US, publicly traded (NYSE: DOCN) |
Pricing
This is the big one. For equivalent specs, Hetzner is 2-4x cheaper.
A production SaaS server with 4 vCPUs, 8GB RAM, and 160GB SSD costs about $14/month on Hetzner. The closest DigitalOcean equivalent is about $48/month. That's $408/year saved — real money when you're bootstrapping.
Bandwidth widens the gap. Hetzner includes up to 20TB of transfer on EU plans (lower on US/Singapore). DigitalOcean includes 4-6TB and charges $0.01/GB after that. If your SaaS serves any meaningful traffic, this adds up fast.
Performance
For most indie SaaS products — web app, API, database, background workers — either provider gives you more than enough. I haven't noticed a meaningful performance difference in practice.
Hetzner uses AMD EPYC processors on their cloud line. Solid single-thread and multi-thread performance. DigitalOcean's Premium droplets use comparable hardware.
One thing worth knowing: Hetzner's dedicated vCPU plans give you consistent performance without noisy neighbor issues. DigitalOcean's shared CPU droplets can have variable performance under load.
Data Centers
DigitalOcean has more locations — 10+ regions across multiple continents. Hetzner has fewer but has been expanding: Germany, Finland, US (Ashburn and Hillsboro), and Singapore.
If your users are in the US or Europe, both work well. If you need Australia, India, or the UK, DigitalOcean has the edge.
For most indie SaaS products, a US or EU location is fine. CDNs handle static assets regardless of where the origin server is.
Managed Services
DigitalOcean offers managed databases, managed Kubernetes, an App Platform, and Spaces (S3-compatible storage). If you don't want to manage PostgreSQL yourself, they'll do it for $15-60/month.
Hetzner gives you VMs, block storage, load balancers, firewalls, and object storage. No managed databases, no PaaS. You manage your own stack.
The trade-off is straightforward: DigitalOcean's managed services reduce operational work. Hetzner's approach gives you more control at significantly lower cost. Running PostgreSQL on your own server is straightforward — especially with deployment tools like Kamal that handle the containerization.
I prefer Hetzner's approach. I don't need a $30/month managed database when PostgreSQL runs fine in a Docker container on the same server.
Developer Experience
DigitalOcean has a cleaner control panel and better documentation. Their community tutorials are genuinely good. The API is well-designed.
Hetzner's console is functional but less polished. Their CLI tool (hcloud) works well. Documentation is adequate.
Both have Terraform providers, which is what matters if you're managing infrastructure as code.
Reliability
Both have good track records. Hetzner has been running infrastructure since 1997. DigitalOcean has had some notable incidents but generally maintains solid uptime.
Neither offers the multi-AZ redundancy SLAs of AWS or GCP, but for indie SaaS, both are more than reliable enough.
When to Choose Hetzner
- You want the best price-to-performance ratio
- You're comfortable managing your own stack (or using tools that do it for you)
- You want hosting costs under $20/month for a production SaaS
- You're deploying with Kamal, Docker Compose, or similar
- You don't need managed databases or PaaS
When to Choose DigitalOcean
- You want managed databases without running PostgreSQL yourself
- You need data centers in regions Hetzner doesn't cover
- You prefer the App Platform for zero-server deployments
- You value the documentation and community tutorials
What Stacknaut Uses
I chose Hetzner. A production-grade server costs about $14/month — roughly what you'd pay for a single managed database on DigitalOcean. Over a year, you save $408 versus equivalent DigitalOcean specs.
But picking Hetzner is the easy part. The hard part is setting up Terraform to provision the server, writing Dockerfiles, configuring Caddy as a reverse proxy, wiring up Kamal for zero-downtime deploys, and getting SSL working. That's easily 12+ hours before you write a line of product code.
Stacknaut includes all of it — Terraform config, Kamal deploy.yml, Dockerfiles, and Caddyfile — configured and tested in production. terraform apply creates the server. kamal deploy ships your app. Two commands from zero to production.
At $199, the infrastructure setup alone pays for itself in saved time. The $408/year hosting savings versus DigitalOcean is a bonus.