Rails hosting on DigitalOcean
Rails hosting on DigitalOcean Droplets
Hatchbox creates Droplets in your DigitalOcean account and turns them into production Rails servers — Ruby, Postgres, Redis, SSL, background workers, and git-push deploys with zero downtime.
Includes a 7 day free trial. $15 per server per month after that — unlimited apps.
Droplets are about as simple and predictable as cloud servers get: a 2 vCPU / 4GB Droplet is $24 a month with 4TB of transfer included, and the price doesn't move. What a Droplet doesn't come with is a Rails stack, a deploy pipeline, or anyone to keep it patched. That's the part Hatchbox does.
Connect your DigitalOcean account, pick a region and a size, and Hatchbox provisions the Droplet: Ubuntu LTS, the Ruby version from your repo, your database, Caddy for SSL, and deploys on every push. The Droplet stays in your account and DigitalOcean bills you for it directly at list price. Hatchbox is $15 a month per server on top, no matter how many apps you run on it.
What Hatchbox sets up on DigitalOcean
Droplets from the dashboard
Connect DigitalOcean once with OAuth, then create servers without leaving Hatchbox. Every Droplet gets private networking, IPv6, and DigitalOcean's monitoring agent turned on.
Tags you can build on
Droplets are tagged with their cluster and role — production,
production:web, production:worker. Point a DigitalOcean
firewall or a managed database's trusted sources at a tag, and new servers are
covered the moment they boot.
Databases, your choice
Run Postgres, MySQL, Redis, or SQLite on a Droplet at no extra cost, or use a
DigitalOcean Managed Database and add its connection URL to your app. Start on the
Droplet and move to managed later — it's a pg_dump away.
Backups to Spaces
Schedule database backups from the dashboard and upload them to DigitalOcean Spaces, Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, or any S3-compatible storage — off the server, so a lost Droplet doesn't take your data with it.
Load balancing on a Droplet
When one server isn't enough, add more web servers and give one Droplet the load balancer role. Hatchbox configures Caddy to spread traffic across them and handle SSL for every domain.
Root access, always
It's a normal Ubuntu server. SSH in, run a Rails console, tail logs, install anything. If you cancel Hatchbox, the Droplets keep running in your account exactly as they are.
Hatchbox detects Rails from your Gemfile and handles the rest — see how a Rails deploy works.
What Rails hosting on DigitalOcean costs
Your total is the Droplet, billed by DigitalOcean, plus $15 for Hatchbox. Regular Basic Droplet prices, verified September 2026. Every app you add to a server is free.
| Setup | Droplet | DigitalOcean | Hatchbox | Total / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Side project or staging | 1 vCPU / 2GB, 50GB disk | $12 | $15 | $27 |
| Typical production app — web, worker, Postgres, Redis | 2 vCPU / 4GB, 80GB disk | $24 | $15 | $39 |
| Busier app, or a few apps sharing a server | 4 vCPU / 8GB, 160GB disk | $48 | $15 | $63 |
| An agency's worth of apps on one server | 8 vCPU / 16GB, 320GB disk | $96 | $15 | $111 |
The $6 1GB Droplet is fine for static sites, but a Rails app with Postgres on the same box wants at least 2GB. Need more room later? Resize the Droplet in DigitalOcean — Hatchbox doesn't charge more for bigger servers.
Droplets with Hatchbox vs App Platform
App Platform is DigitalOcean's own PaaS, and it's a good choice if you never want to think about a server. It bills per container, though, and the web process, the worker, Postgres, and Redis are each a separate line item. Here's the same Rails app both ways, at September 2026 list prices.
| Component | App Platform Plan | App Platform Cost | Hatchbox Plan | Hatchbox Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web | Shared container, 1 vCPU / 1GB | $12.00 | Droplet, 2 vCPU / 4GB | $24.00 |
| Worker | Shared container, 1 vCPU / 1GB | $12.00 | Runs on the Droplet | $0.00 |
| PostgreSQL | Managed, 1GB / 10GB storage | $15.15 | Runs on the Droplet | $0.00 |
| Redis | Managed Caching for Valkey, 1GB | $15.00 | Runs on the Droplet | $0.00 |
| Platform Fee | None | $0.00 | $15/server | $15.00 |
| Monthly Total | $54.15 | $39.00 |
Web
Worker
PostgreSQL
Redis
Platform Fee
TOTAL / MONTH
The Hatchbox setup costs less and has four times the memory to share. The gap grows with every app: a second app on App Platform is another set of containers, while on the Droplet it's free. Bandwidth past the included allowance is $0.02/GB on App Platform and $0.01/GB on Droplets.
To be fair to App Platform: its managed database comes with automatic daily backups and a standby node is one click away. On a Droplet, Postgres is yours to back up — Hatchbox schedules that for you — and high availability means a Managed Database (from about $60/month with a standby). If you use Solid Queue and Solid Cache instead of Redis, drop the Valkey line and the totals land within a dollar of each other.
Pick any DigitalOcean region
Hatchbox lists every region where Basic Droplets are available: New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Atlanta, Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, Bangalore, Singapore, and Sydney, plus DigitalOcean's newer US datacenters as they add Basic plans. Put your servers next to your users, and next to your managed database if you use one.
What customers say
I run 15+ Rails apps and static sites with Hatchbox. My bill went from $400/month on Heroku to $28/mo with Hatchbox & DigitalOcean combined.
Donn Felker
Software Professional
If you want the most bang for your buck, Hatchbox / Hetzner / DigitalOcean is the killer combo. You can throw sooo much at this and it's crazy how inexpensive it is.
Josh Pigford
Serial Entrepreneur
- Applications deployed
- 24,000+
- Deployments run
- 2 million+
- Deploying since
- 2016
Rails on DigitalOcean questions
Still stuck? Ask us directly — a real person who has deployed a lot of Rails apps to DigitalOcean will answer.
Which Droplet size do I need for a Rails app?
Should I use DigitalOcean Managed Databases?
DATABASE_URL. Managed Postgres starts at $15.15/month, and about $60/month with a standby node. Plenty of teams start with Postgres on the Droplet, backed up on a schedule, and move once the app earns it.
How does Hatchbox connect to my DigitalOcean account?
Can I use a Droplet I already have?
What happens to my Droplets if I cancel Hatchbox?
Is Hetzner cheaper than DigitalOcean for Rails?
Simple, predictable pricing.
We charge per server, not per app. Run one application or twenty on the same box — the bill doesn't change.
$15
- Unlimited applications
- Deploy anywhere
- Zero downtime deployments
- Custom domains & free SSL
- Databases, cron jobs & background workers
- Full SSH access to your servers
- Real, human support
- 7 day free trial
Ready to deploy your Rails app?
Hatchbox has run more than 2 million deploys across 24,000+ applications since 2016. Start a 7 day free trial and put yours on a server you own.