DigitalOcean has deservedly grown into the "default cloud" for small and medium-sized development teams: the company was founded in 2012 as a response to the need for simple and affordable cloud services, and its first product was the Droplet, an easy-to-launch virtual machine. Today, however, DigitalOcean is a much broader platform, with its own PaaS, App Platform, and the private container registry DOCR, which increases convenience but often also raises the total cost of the stack.

In a realistic European scenario with four VPSs and object storage, the cost difference is large even under fairly conservative assumptions. In the comparative model adopted here, the monthly bill comes to 226 USD on the DigitalOcean side and 68.45 EUR on the Hetzner side. Converted at the exchange rates of 18 May 2026, this gives about 823.79 PLN versus 290.46 PLN, i.e. about 533.33 PLN of savings per month and about 6,400 PLN per year.

The second argument is less "hard" financially, but increasingly important for many Polish companies: data jurisdiction. The UODO (Polish data protection authority) reminds us that within the EEA there is no need to apply standard contractual clauses for data transfers, whereas transfers to third countries require separate legal bases and safeguards; at the same time, there is an adequacy decision for certain entities in the USA. Despite this, the European Parliament still describes dependence on non-European cloud and software providers as a strategic vulnerability, pointing among other things to the risks associated with the CLOUD Act and the general dependence on non-EU providers.

Hetzner fits well into this direction as a European operator: it has its own data centre parks in Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Helsinki, declares GDPR compliance for its cloud services, holds an ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate and also points to BSI C5 Type 2 certification for its cloud services.

DigitalOcean as the former standard

The fact that so many teams chose DigitalOcean for years was no accident. Its value proposition was very clear: a simple interface, predictable billing, fast VM launches and a good developer experience. In the company's official history, DigitalOcean itself stresses that it was founded to give creators and companies more easily accessible, affordable cloud solutions.

For startups, software houses and product teams, this model was very attractive for at least three reasons:

• a low barrier to entry — Droplets were a simple, understandable server abstraction;
• a reasonable catalogue of basic services — VM, storage, networking and later also managed services;
• predictability — DigitalOcean still promotes "simple, predictable pricing" for Droplets.

The problem is that as the platform matures, so does the temptation to add more layers of convenience. App Platform is a full PaaS that builds, deploys and scales applications by itself. DOCR is a native private registry for images. App Platform also charges extra for, among other things, outbound transfer beyond the included pool and dedicated egress IPs; DOCR has paid plans starting at 5 USD per month. This is not a flaw in itself — it simply means that we are paying for convenience and shorter operational time.

This is precisely where the space for Hetzner appears. If you are already running on Docker anyway, have your own CI/CD pipeline, and use Coolify or another self-hosted control plane, then part of the "convenience margin" of the American platform is no longer necessary. The comparison then starts to be won not by the feature catalogue, but by the cost-to-resource ratio and the location where the infrastructure resides.

Geopolitics, privacy and jurisdiction

For a Polish company, the question "where is the server physically located?" is only half of the issue today. The other half is: which jurisdiction does the provider fall under, and what does the legal path of data processing look like.

The starting point is that the GDPR creates a common data protection framework in the EU and EEA. The UODO explicitly states that for transfers within the EEA there is no need to apply SCCs, because both controllers and processors operating in the EEA are covered by the provisions of Regulation 2016/679. At the same time, the UODO also reminds us that the European Commission has issued an adequacy decision for certain commercial entities in the USA. In other words: hosting with an American provider is not automatically "illegal" today, but a strictly European model is often simply simpler, clearer and easier to defend in compliance or due diligence.

The strategic background is also becoming increasingly clear. In 2025 studies, the European Parliament states that the European digital ecosystem remains strongly dependent on non-European — primarily American — software and cloud providers. The same analysis argues that such dependence creates strategic vulnerabilities, strengthens vendor lock-in and can increase long-term costs. In doing so, the Parliament points directly to the jurisdictional risks associated with the CLOUD Act.

This is an important distinction: migrating to Hetzner is not a certificate of absolute "digital sovereignty", but it is a real step towards:

• a shorter jurisdictional chain,
• less dependence on American platforms,
• simpler communication with clients and compliance departments,
• a better fit with the European narrative about data protection and strategic autonomy.

Hetzner provides a very concrete argument here: for the Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki locations, both customer data and data held on the server remain in the EU; the company also notes that it does not operate its own data centres in the USA and Singapore, and bases its European services on its own data centre parks in Germany and Finland. On top of this come declared GDPR compliance, the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate and BSI C5 Type 2 certification.

For a Polish entrepreneur, the practical meaning is simple: if you handle EU customer data, sell to a regulated sector, or simply want to reduce the number of "buts" in a conversation with a lawyer, auditor or enterprise client, a European operator and European regions give you a narrative and process advantage. This does not replace proper security configuration, but it puts the foundation in order.

If you want to test Hetzner yourself, you can use our affiliate link — after registering you will receive 20 euros of credit to start with, to be used on Hetzner Cloud services.

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The numbers that make a difference

To make the comparison fair, I assume a simple, concrete setup.

Assumptions:

1. Four VPS servers run continuously throughout the month.
2. Each Hetzner server has a public IPv4, so I add the official 0.50 EUR per month for Primary IPv4.
3. I select parameters as close to "like for like" as possible for CPU, RAM and disk.
4. Transfer load from the VPSs themselves fits within the packages included in the price.
5. Object storage covers 8 buckets, a total of 500 GiB of data and 1 TB of public outbound per month.
6. I compare list prices net, without local VAT/sales tax.

I calculate the monthly cost as follows:

The table below is based on the official price lists and parameters of DigitalOcean Droplets/Spaces and Hetzner Cloud/Object Storage/Primary IPv4. I adopt the PLN exchange rate per the NBP of 18 May 2026; for the USD→EUR conversion I additionally use the ECB rate of the same day.

Sources for the table: Droplet parameters and prices, transfer and transfer pooling within a team, Spaces prices, current Hetzner prices as of 1 April 2026, the Primary IPv4 fee, CPX22/32/42 limits/specifications, and exchange rates.

Importantly, a lower infrastructure cost is not the only benefit to start with. By registering with Hetzner via our affiliate link, you will receive 20 euros of credit to use on cloud services — so you can run your first tests without putting an additional strain on the budget.

Create an account and get 20 euros

The result is very clear: around 823.79 PLN per month on DigitalOcean versus around 290.46 PLN per month on Hetzner. The monthly saving is therefore around 533.33 PLN, i.e. about 64.7%. Annually we are talking about around a 6,400 PLN difference for a really ordinary, not overly large environment.

It is worth adding two important nuances:

1. If object storage generates greater public outbound, Hetzner's advantage grows, because DigitalOcean Spaces charges 0.01 USD/GiB of outbound once the package is exceeded, whereas Hetzner has a much gentler egress model once the base package is exceeded.
2. If the build server does not run continuously but is launched ad hoc, DigitalOcean partly regains the advantage thanks to per-second billing for Droplets.

A diagram of the target topology for such an environment could look like this:

In practice, such a setup fits well with Hetzner's philosophy: low-level, predictable IaaS with ready-made starter applications, including for Coolify and Docker CE, but without trying to "hide" the infrastructure behind a PaaS layer.

What migration looks like in practice

In our case, we migrated Coolify along with a sizable group of production applications and their databases. The operation itself was completed in about 6–8 hours of work and went without major problems. This does not mean that every migration will be this smooth — but with a well-prepared plan, it is achievable.

The most important lesson is: first you migrate the control layer, then the data, and finally the traffic. The Coolify and Hetzner documentation explains very well why. Coolify does not have a built-in "magic" mechanism for moving applications between hosts; deployments have to be recreated manually and databases and volumes moved. What's more, a backup of a Coolify instance does not cover application data — it covers the instance itself, and the APP_KEY and SSH keys must be transferred separately. Hetzner, in turn, reminds us that before performing the final backup, the service should no longer accept writes, otherwise part of the data will not be included in the copy.

In practice, the following sequence works well:

1. Inventory
   You list applications, domains, volumes, databases, crons, queues, webhooks, external dependencies and all secrets.
2. Preparing the target
   You set up a project in Hetzner, create servers, a private network, firewalls, Primary IPv4, object storage buckets and — if you want — a new Coolify instance of the same version as the previous one. Hetzner has a ready-made Coolify application in its Cloud Apps catalogue.
3. Backing up the control plane layer
   You take a backup of the Coolify instance, save the APP_KEY, copy the SSH keys and the configuration needed to connect to the hosts. Without this, the new panel may not regain full ability to manage the servers.
4. Migrating application data
   For databases you do dumps and test restores. For Docker volumes you use a safe backup/restore process, not a "raw" copy of the /var/lib/docker/volumes directory. For object buckets you synchronise and immediately test ACL/CORS.
5. Tests on the new environment
   You check application startup, schema migrations, queues, jobs, uploads, TLS certificates, connections to storage, logging and monitoring.
6. Final cutover
   You briefly freeze writes, perform a final delta-sync, switch DNS/traffic, observe logs and metrics, and leave the old environment in place for a rollback window.

Below is a short checklist that really makes a difference in such projects:

This checklist follows directly from the Coolify and Hetzner documentation: an instance backup does not cover application data, the APP_KEY and SSH keys are critical, and server snapshots/backups do not cover attached Volumes.

The process can be summarised as follows:

In our project, an important element was also the matter of a registry for Docker images. Hetzner does not provide a native equivalent of DOCR as a managed service, so we solved this with our own open-source registry. The effect: a bit more responsibility on our side, but without an additional subscription. This is a typical trade-off of "less platform magic, more control and a lower bill". On DigitalOcean, DOCR performs a similar function, with paid plans starting at 5 USD per month.

Where Hetzner does not win

To keep this post fair, it must be said plainly: Hetzner is not better at everything.

First: less PaaS and fewer ready-made "managed" layers.

DigitalOcean App Platform is a fully fledged PaaS that builds, deploys and scales applications by itself. Hetzner gives you excellent infrastructure building blocks and a few ready-made starter applications, but does not cover the whole process with a PaaS layer. If a team lacks operational competences, DigitalOcean may be more convenient.

Second: no native, managed registry service analogous to DOCR.

DigitalOcean has a private registry with plans from 5 USD to 20 USD per month. In Hetzner you most often have to set up your own registry or use an external service. This lowers the subscription cost but increases operational responsibility.

Third: Hetzner's Object Storage is S3-compatible, but not S3-identical.

In its official documentation, Hetzner explicitly lists the lack of support for, among other things, Notifications, Website, Analytics, Logging, Metrics, Replication, Tagging and custom domains for buckets. If you currently use such features or the convenience of a built-in CDN in Spaces, migration requires an additional layer: a reverse proxy, CDN, event bus or your own logic.

Fourth: more responsibility for backup and recovery.

Hetzner provides server snapshots and backups, but the documentation reminds us that these do not cover attached Volumes. This means the backup strategy must still be consciously designed: databases separately, volumes separately, object storage separately and test restores.

Fifth: the cost result depends on the usage pattern.

My comparison assumes a build server running throughout the month. If in your organisation the build node is switched on only for the duration of a job, DigitalOcean partly regains the advantage thanks to per-second billing. On the other hand, if your workloads are ARM-compatible, Hetzner may be even cheaper thanks to the CAX family.

In short: Hetzner wins where you want to manage IaaS more cheaply and more consciously. DigitalOcean still wins where you want to buy convenience and shorten operational responsibility.

What a Polish company should do now

If I were to wrap this topic up in one sentence, I would say this: for many Polish companies maintaining their own containerised applications, migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner is today economically sensible and procedurally defensible.

It is particularly worth considering when:

• you already have Docker, CI/CD and basic operational competences;
• you are not strongly dependent on App Platform and other PaaS services;
• you hold EU customer data and want to simplify the compliance narrative;
• your bills are growing not from "raw VMs", but from the entire managed environment;
• you want to consciously reduce dependence on American providers.

On the other hand, I would approach migration more cautiously if:

• you use App Platform or other convenient layers deeply, which would have to be recreated;
• you rely on object storage features that go beyond basic S3 compatibility;
• you do not have a backup/restore process, smoke tests and a rollback plan;
• your workloads are short-lived and make heavy use of per-second billing.

For ROI, the matter is simple:

If we conservatively assume an engineering work cost of 250 PLN/h and a project time of 6–8 hours, the payback from the infrastructure saving alone occurs after about 2.8–3.8 months. That is a very short horizon for a change that at the same time puts the matter of cost, jurisdiction and technological independence in order.

The cost difference is visible even with a small setup, and it can be further "amortised" to start with: by registering via our affiliate link, you will receive 20 euros of credit to use on Hetzner Cloud products.

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If your company wants to pay less, simplify the data jurisdiction issue and move to the European cloud without operational chaos, then it is worth calculating this move now. We will help you prepare a realistic TCO model, assess dependencies on managed services, design the target architecture and carry out the migration so that it closes within a predictable window, with backup, rollback and recovery tests.