Raff Apps wins on lower comparable service prices, $0 public application egress, persistent application volumes, full Docker Compose imports, and first-party managed data services. DigitalOcean App Platform wins on 12 deployment regions, a free static-site tier, GitLab and Bitbucket sources, dedicated CPU plans, mature autoscaling, and a 99.95% per-component SLA. Choose DigitalOcean App Platform when regional placement and autoscaling are requirements; choose Raff when us-east, durable app volumes, Compose portability, and a tighter monthly cost boundary fit the workload. Raff Pro is $27.99/month for 2 vCPU and 4 GB, while DigitalOcean's 2 shared vCPU / 4 GiB plan is $50/month with 250 GiB of outbound transfer included.
DigitalOcean App Platform and Raff Apps are both managed deployment platforms, but their strongest buying cases are different. DigitalOcean spreads dynamic apps across 12 regions and can autoscale request-driven services to 100 containers, while Raff exposes one public us-east region and emphasizes predictable service tiers, $0 public app egress, and persistent volumes. DigitalOcean starts dynamic compute at $5/month; Raff Apps starts at $3/month. For small SaaS teams, the useful comparison is therefore not only deployment convenience but the full cost and operating model once transfer, durable state, source integrations, and scaling requirements are included.
DigitalOcean App Platform is the stronger fit when location choice, autoscaling, dedicated CPU, or multiple Git providers are requirements. Raff is the stronger fit when the workload can stay in us-east and the team values lower listed service prices, persistent application volumes, Docker Compose portability, and $0 public egress.
| Decision factor | Choose Raff Apps | Choose DigitalOcean App Platform |
|---|
| Dynamic entry price | You want a managed runtime from $3/month | You want 1 shared vCPU / 512 MiB from $5/month |
| Geography | One public us-east region fits the workload | You need one of 12 App Platform regions |
| Persistent files | Application-attached persistent volumes matter | Durable state can live in Spaces or Managed Databases |
| Bandwidth | Public application egress should cost $0 | Included pooled transfer plus $0.02/GiB overage fits |
| Source providers | GitHub is sufficient | GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket is required |
| Scaling | Published service tiers and scale-to-zero fit | Request-based or CPU-based autoscaling is required |
| Deployment model | Full Docker Compose import matters | App Spec, API, doctl, or Terraform is preferred |
From the Raff pricing side, the practical lesson is to compare the complete application bill rather than the smallest plan card. DigitalOcean's $5 entry tier includes more listed shared CPU than Raff Micro, but the decision changes materially at matched 1 vCPU / 2 GB and 2 vCPU / 4 GB sizes, and changes again when outbound transfer or persistent state enters the architecture.
DigitalOcean App Platform is a fully managed PaaS that builds and deploys applications from Git repositories or container images while DigitalOcean manages the underlying infrastructure. It supports web services, static sites, workers, cron jobs, deployment jobs, functions, and database integrations.
Current source options include GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket repositories plus images from DigitalOcean Container Registry, Docker Hub, and GitHub Container Registry. Apps can be managed through the control panel, API, doctl, Terraform, and a YAML App Spec.
DigitalOcean offers shared and dedicated CPU plans. Shared dynamic plans start at $5/month for 1 shared vCPU / 512 MiB, while dedicated plans start at $29/month for 1 dedicated vCPU / 512 MiB. Request-based autoscaling works with shared and dedicated CPU plans and supports up to 100 containers; CPU-based autoscaling requires dedicated CPU and, like fixed scaling, can reach 250 containers.
DigitalOcean also provides a free static-site tier for up to 3 apps containing only static-site components, with 1 GiB outbound transfer per app. Its strongest advantages in this comparison are 12 deployment regions, a 99.95% App Platform component SLA, multiple source providers, dedicated CPU options, autoscaling, and integration with the wider DigitalOcean cloud.
Its clearest constraint is durable local state. App Platform does not support volumes, and the local filesystem is limited to 4 GiB and is ephemeral across deployments and other container replacements. Persistent data therefore belongs in services such as Spaces or DigitalOcean Managed Databases.
Raff overview
Raff Apps is Raff's managed application platform for deploying source code and containers without administering the operating system beneath them. It supports GitHub push-to-deploy, buildpacks, Dockerfiles, existing container images, and full Docker Compose imports.
Raff Apps supports public web services, private services, long-running workers, timezone-aware cron jobs, one-off jobs, pull-request previews, persistent application volumes, immutable revisions, one-click rollback, and scale-to-zero behavior. Applications can connect to Raff Managed Databases for PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, ClickHouse, and Kafka, plus object storage, VMs, private networking, Kubernetes, and Functions.
Current service tiers are:
| Tier | vCPU | RAM | Ephemeral disk | Monthly ceiling |
|---|
| Micro | 0.25 | 512 MB | 2 GB | $3.00 |
| Starter | 0.5 | 1 GB | 5 GB | $6.99 |
| Standard | 1 | 2 GB | 10 GB | $16.99 |
| Pro | 2 | 4 GB | 20 GB | $27.99 |
| Pro Max | 4 | 8 GB | 40 GB | $61.99 |
| Scale | 8 | 16 GB | 80 GB | $119.99 |
Runtime is billed per second against each published monthly ceiling. Public application egress and Apps team seats cost $0, and the spend cap is enabled by default.
Raff currently exposes one public region, us-east, which is a real limitation for teams that require placement closer to users elsewhere. Raff publishes a 99.9% platform SLA. On August 16, 2026, Raff was rated 4.5/5, with G2 at 4.6/5.
DigitalOcean bills each App Platform component according to its container size and replica count. Apps are billed by the second with a one-minute minimum. Raff also prorates Apps runtime by the second but caps each service at its published monthly price.
DigitalOcean also offers a $10/month fixed-size 1 shared vCPU / 1 GiB plan with 100 GiB included outbound transfer and no manual replica scaling. The $12/month 1 GiB plan in the scalable row below allows manual scaling and includes 150 GiB. These are different plan options, not two prices for identical scaling behavior.
| Buying position | Raff Apps | DigitalOcean App Platform | Decision signal |
|---|
| Entry dynamic app | Micro — 0.25 vCPU / 512 MB / $3 | 1 shared vCPU / 512 MiB / $5 | DigitalOcean includes more listed shared CPU; Raff is $2 lower |
| 1 GiB fixed-size | Starter — 0.5 vCPU / 1 GB / $6.99 | 1 shared vCPU / 1 GiB / $10 fixed | Fixed DO plan has more listed shared CPU but no manual replica scaling |
| 1 GB dynamic | Starter — 0.5 vCPU / 1 GB / $6.99 | 1 shared vCPU / 1 GiB / $12 scalable | DigitalOcean adds manual horizontal scaling |
| 1 vCPU / 2 GB | Standard — $16.99 | 1 shared vCPU / 2 GiB — $25 | Closely matched published CPU/RAM totals |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | Pro — $27.99 | 2 shared vCPU / 4 GiB — $50 | Raff is $22.01 lower before DO overage |
| Static sites | No equivalent published free Apps tier | Up to 3 static-only apps free | DigitalOcean wins for qualifying static-only projects |
Comparison class: these rows compare published CPU, memory, and price positions, not measured application performance. DigitalOcean distinguishes shared and dedicated CPU scheduling; Raff Apps does not publish the same shared-versus-dedicated labels, so resource counts alone should not be treated as benchmark equivalence.
Bandwidth cost math
DigitalOcean's 2 shared vCPU / 4 GiB plan includes 250 GiB outbound transfer. Additional outbound transfer costs $0.02/GiB, and App Platform allowance and usage are pooled across apps at the team level. Raff Apps public egress is $0.
| Monthly outbound traffic | Raff Pro | DigitalOcean 2 shared vCPU / 4 GiB |
|---|
| 250 GiB | $27.99 | $50.00 |
| 500 GiB | $27.99 | $55.00 |
| 1 TiB | $27.99 | $65.48 |
| 2 TiB | $27.99 | $85.96 |
| 5 TiB | $27.99 | $147.40 |
The DigitalOcean examples assume no unused transfer allowance from other App Platform components in the same team pool. Pooling can reduce overage for teams whose other apps use less than their accumulated allowance.
Automated backups
DigitalOcean App Platform rollback and data backup are separate systems. App Platform can roll an app's code, configuration, and App Spec back to one of the 10 most recent successful deployments, but DigitalOcean explicitly states that this rollback does not restore database data.
DigitalOcean Managed Databases include daily backups with point-in-time recovery; PostgreSQL and MySQL documentation currently describes PITR within the previous 7 days. App Platform's 4 GiB local filesystem is ephemeral and should not be treated as a backup target.
Raff likewise separates application revision rollback from durable-data recovery. Persistent volumes, managed databases, and object storage need recovery policies appropriate to the state they hold; one-click application rollback does not substitute for a database or file backup.
DigitalOcean dedicated egress IPs are billed per second up to $25/month. Development databases cost $7/month per 512 MB, while production managed databases are separate resources. DigitalOcean can still be the better buy when its 12-region footprint, autoscaling, dedicated CPU, or source-provider integrations eliminate other operational work.
Bandwidth and transfer policy
Every current DigitalOcean App Platform compute plan includes an outbound-transfer allowance, from 50 GiB on the $5 shared plan to 900 GiB on the largest listed dedicated plan. Additional outbound transfer is $0.02/GiB and inbound transfer is free. Transfer allowance and usage are pooled across App Platform apps at the team level and do not roll over.
DigitalOcean currently notes that users can view ingress bandwidth for individual apps but cannot directly view accrued App Platform transfer allowance or cumulative App Platform usage. That makes the final monthly charge more dependent on team-wide traffic patterns than a single component's plan card suggests.
Raff Apps prices public application egress at $0. For bandwidth-heavy APIs, downloads, or traffic with large seasonal swings, that removes a variable from the application bill. DigitalOcean remains stronger when global regional placement is more valuable than the transfer difference or when pooled allowances cover the team's normal traffic.
| Feature | Raff Apps | DigitalOcean App Platform |
|---|
| Dynamic entry price | $3/month | $5/month |
| Source providers | GitHub | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket |
| Dockerfile / existing image | Yes | Yes |
| Docker Compose | Full stack import | App components are modeled through App Platform configuration/App Spec |
| Public regions | 1: us-east | 12 |
| Free static tier | No equivalent published Apps tier | Up to 3 static-only apps |
| Persistent app volumes | Yes | No |
| App local filesystem | 2–80 GB ephemeral disk by Raff tier | 4 GiB ephemeral limit |
| Public application egress | $0 | Included allowance, then $0.02/GiB |
| Request-based autoscaling | Not published as a Raff Apps control | Shared and dedicated services, up to 100 containers |
| CPU autoscaling | Not published as a Raff Apps control | Dedicated plans, up to 250 containers |
| Dedicated CPU app plans | Not separately labeled | Yes, from $29/month |
| Deployment rollback | Immutable revisions, one-click rollback | 10 most recent successful deployments |
| Managed data options | PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, ClickHouse, Kafka | PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, MongoDB, Kafka, OpenSearch |
| SLA | 99.9% platform SLA | 99.95% per App Platform component instance |
DigitalOcean wins clearly on region count, Git-provider breadth, dedicated CPU choices, free static hosting, autoscaling controls, and the higher numerical App Platform SLA. Raff wins on lower listed prices at the matched 1 vCPU / 2 GB and 2 vCPU / 4 GB positions, persistent application volumes, full Compose imports, and $0 public egress.
This comparison includes 0 controlled Raff-versus-DigitalOcean App Platform application benchmarks, so it does not declare either platform faster. DigitalOcean publishes both shared and dedicated CPU app plans, while Raff Apps does not expose the same CPU-class labels; a responsible benchmark would need matched CPU scheduling, region, memory, application image, database placement, caching, concurrency, and repeated test windows.
Reliability commitment
DigitalOcean commits to 99.95% monthly uptime for each App Platform component instance. Raff publishes a 99.9% platform SLA. On the numerical commitment alone, DigitalOcean has the stronger SLA.
DigitalOcean also documents high availability for apps running two or more containers. That is an important strength for teams prepared to pay for multiple replicas. A one-container deployment still leaves the application at one runtime instance, even though the platform's component SLA applies.
Persistent state
DigitalOcean App Platform does not support volumes. Its local filesystem is 4 GiB and ephemeral, so production files must be externalized to Spaces, Managed Databases, or another durable service. That architecture is often desirable for horizontally scaled apps, but it can require application changes for software that expects local persistent files.
Raff Apps supports persistent application volumes. This makes lift-and-shift deployment easier for some stateful applications, though horizontally scaled services still need a deliberate shared-data design rather than assuming one attached filesystem solves multi-instance state.
Autoscaling and capacity
DigitalOcean has the more mature documented autoscaling surface. Request-based autoscaling can use requests per second or P95 request duration on shared or dedicated services, with a maximum of 100 containers. CPU-based autoscaling requires dedicated CPU and can scale to 250 containers. Request-based autoscaling and Scale to Zero cannot be enabled on the same service.
Raff's public Apps model is simpler: teams choose a service tier, can use scale-to-zero behavior, and work within the platform's managed service abstraction. Teams that specifically need request-target or CPU-target autoscaling should treat DigitalOcean as the stronger option.
Release and data recovery
DigitalOcean can roll back to one of the 10 most recent successful deployments, restoring code, configuration, and App Spec while leaving database data untouched. Raff uses immutable revisions and one-click application rollback. Both models require separate database and file recovery planning when a release includes state changes.
DigitalOcean's wider cloud catalog is a genuine operational advantage for teams already using Droplets, DOKS, Spaces, Container Registry, Functions, or its Managed Databases. Raff offers a smaller integrated surface across Apps, VMs, managed databases, object storage, Kubernetes, Functions, and private networking.
Choose DigitalOcean App Platform when:
- Regional placement is mandatory. DigitalOcean App Platform exposes 12 regions versus Raff Apps' single public
us-east region.
- Autoscaling is a core requirement. Request-based rules can scale to 100 containers, while fixed and CPU-based scaling can reach 250.
- GitLab or Bitbucket is required. DigitalOcean supports both directly in addition to GitHub.
- Dedicated CPU app containers matter. Current dedicated plans start at $29/month for 1 dedicated vCPU / 512 MiB.
- Static-only projects should be free. DigitalOcean allows up to 3 qualifying static-only apps at $0.
- A higher numerical SLA is required. DigitalOcean commits to 99.95% per App Platform component instance.
- The team already uses DigitalOcean. App Platform integrates with its databases, Spaces, registry, Functions, DOKS, API,
doctl, and Terraform workflows.
Choose Raff Apps when:
- Comparable service prices matter. Raff Standard is $16.99 at 1 vCPU / 2 GB versus DigitalOcean's $25 shared plan; Raff Pro is $27.99 at 2 vCPU / 4 GB versus $50.
- Public egress is material. Raff Apps charges $0 for public application egress instead of $0.02/GiB after DigitalOcean's pooled allowance.
- Persistent app volumes are required. DigitalOcean App Platform provides 0 persistent volumes and a 4 GiB ephemeral filesystem.
- Docker Compose is the deployment artifact. Raff can import a full Compose stack instead of translating services into platform-specific components.
- A default cost guardrail matters. Raff Apps uses published monthly ceilings and enables the spend cap by default.
- Managed data should stay in the same compact workflow. Raff provides 5 managed data engines: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, ClickHouse, and Kafka.
- The workload fits
us-east. DigitalOcean's 12-region advantage has little value if one eastern-US deployment location already meets latency and architecture requirements.
Raff Apps is a live managed application platform. For adjacent app-platform choices, compare Render and Raff, Coolify and Raff, and Netlify and Raff.
- Inventory the App Platform app. Export the App Spec and record services, static sites, workers, jobs, functions, databases, repositories, branches, build/run commands, environment-variable scopes, domains, routes, health checks, replica counts, autoscaling, region, egress IPs, logs, and alerts. Gotcha: App Spec fields are platform configuration, not a portable Compose file.
- Map components to Raff services. Move public HTTP components to web services, internal APIs to private services, consumers to workers, schedules to cron jobs, and administrative commands to one-off jobs.
- Choose a portable build source. Use GitHub, a Dockerfile, a prebuilt image, buildpacks, or Docker Compose. Gotcha: GitLab and Bitbucket source workflows need a GitHub mirror or an external image-building pipeline before direct Raff deployment.
- Move durable state. Export managed databases with native tools and copy Spaces objects to Raff Object Storage or another S3-compatible destination. Do not plan around App Platform's local filesystem because it is ephemeral.
- Recreate configuration and verify. Add secrets, routes, domains, health checks, private bindings, persistent volumes, managed data services, callbacks, and external allowlists. Test on a temporary hostname and perform a restore rehearsal.
- Cut over with rollback. Lower DNS TTL to 300 seconds, freeze writes where necessary, complete the final data sync, update DNS and callback URLs, monitor production, and retain the DigitalOcean app until the rollback window closes.
Stateless source/image components are usually the easiest part of this migration. Stateful databases, object storage, App Spec assumptions, source-provider integrations, autoscaling rules, egress IP allowlists, and region-specific dependencies create most of the migration risk.
Before switching production traffic, use the App Platform Migration Checklist to validate secrets, durable data, domains, workers, and rollback.
DigitalOcean App Platform is a managed PaaS from DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc., whose principal executive offices are in New York. DigitalOcean was founded in 2012. App Platform deploys source code and container images across 12 regions with managed builds, routing, scaling, monitoring, and integrations into DigitalOcean's broader cloud portfolio.
The DigitalOcean-App-Platform-versus-Raff decision resolves across four measured axes: cost boundary, regional/scaling reach, durable state, and platform operations.
- Cost boundary: Raff starts at $3/month, is $27.99 at 2 vCPU / 4 GB, and charges $0 public app egress; DigitalOcean starts dynamic compute at $5/month, is $50 at 2 shared vCPU / 4 GiB, and meters transfer above plan allowances.
- Regional and scaling reach: DigitalOcean provides 12 regions, request-based autoscaling to 100 containers, CPU/fixed scaling to 250, and dedicated CPU plans; Raff exposes one public
us-east Apps region and a simpler service model.
- Durable state: Raff supports persistent application volumes; DigitalOcean App Platform supports 0 volumes and limits local storage to a 4 GiB ephemeral filesystem, encouraging state to live in databases or object storage.
- Platform operations: DigitalOcean offers GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, App Spec,
doctl, Terraform, and a 99.95% component SLA; Raff emphasizes full Compose import, service ceilings, a default spend cap, and a 99.9% platform SLA.
Choose DigitalOcean App Platform when multi-region placement, autoscaling, dedicated CPU, GitLab/Bitbucket, or DigitalOcean-native operations are requirements. Choose Raff when a us-east deployment can trade geographic breadth for lower comparable service prices, persistent volumes, Docker Compose portability, $0 public egress, and a tighter billing model.
Raff publishes a 99.9% platform SLA.
