DigitalOcean App Platform is a metered system charged by app; Peon provisions limitless services to your existing Droplet. A practical pricing and feature comparison.
The same cloud, but two very distinct approaches.
There are two methods of deploying your app with DigitalOcean, and the pricing disparity between the two may be much greater than you expected. App Platform is the managed PaaS service: you integrate with the code repository, and DigitalOcean provisions, deploys and maintains your app. The costs include monthly rates per component starting at $5 for web services plus separate payments for workers plus $7+ for a development database and $15+ for a production database.
The alternative way is just a regular Droplet: either a $6 VPS (1 CPU, 1 GB) or a $12 VPS (1 CPU, 2 GB) with ability to run as many containerized apps as it has available resources. Traditionally, the droplet approach required self-managing your infrastructure, exactly what a platform like Peon fixes.
Cost at small scale, with real numbers
For example, take a regular indie/agency load of three small apps, shared Postgres, and Redis. In App Platform, this would cost about $37 a month, where three web services ($15), a managed dev database ($7), and Redis ($15) are the cheapest tier offerings (share CPU, limited to 512 MB memory).
On one $12 Droplet using Peon, $12 for the Droplet, $6 for three projects running, all with access to 2 GB of memory plus. About $18 per month total, and the ability to use as much memory as the application needs (without being limited to 512 MB slices).
And this ratio grows with every additional service, as the costs for the additional Droplet resources are already included. The fourth app on App Platform will add somewhere between $5 and $12 of the bill; on your own Droplet, $2.
Comparison of features
Push Git deployment: both, with build log
Automatic HTTPS for custom domains: both
Roll out and roll back with zero downtime: both
Database support: App Platform needs paid managed databases while Peon provides Postgres/MySQL/MongoDB/Redis database on your Droplet with S3 automatic backup
Docker Compose Stacks and one click templates for n8n, Plausible, MinIO: Peon has; App Platform does not have
SSH access, cronjobs, custom packages: Droplet has; App Platform does not have
Auto-scaling among instances: App Platform has; single Droplet can scale up (resizing)
What App Platform does for you that a Droplet doesn’t
Equality demands the other side of the equation. App Platform silently patches the underlying OS, insulates you from any problems with the Docker daemon, and restarts things when the hardware dies without you even noticing. In a Droplet, you’re responsible for updating the OS (unattended-upgrades will take care of any security patches automatically, but you should know it’s there), and a kernel panic is your 2 AM problem, mitigated only by the fact that containerized platforms restart everything on startup.
It’s true that in practice Peon automates the layer that produces the work: Docker installation, proxy and certificate configuration, deployment workflows, database backups and disk management. The part of “managing a server” that’s left over is really quite small, but it’s not zero, and you should know that going in.
Verdict
If you only need one small application and you wish to be rid of any concerns about infrastructure, the $5 plan provided by App Platform is good enough and the surcharge is acceptable. But the moment you need to run multiple services or have something about databases in mind, Droplet+Peon becomes about 50% cheaper at three services and continues to become cheaper relative to that with every new service, while also providing SSH, templates, compose stacks, and databases that are restricted or charged exorbitantly on App Platform.
And since both of them are DigitalOcean products, you can do a gradual transition by setting up a Droplet and moving your apps one by one.
