DigitalOcean is quickly becoming a household name in the web-hosting world. For $5 a month, the company lets you rent a basic virtual private server (or “droplets,” as the company calls them) with 512MB of RAM and a 20GB of SSD-powered hard disk space in one of its three locations (two in the U.S. and one in Amsterdam). The company, as its co-founder and CEO Ben Uretsky told me, believes that its focus on simplicity, speed and keeping prices low will allow it to effectively challenge the incumbents in this space.
Looking ahead, DigitalOcean is planning to launch a data center in Brazil, followed by a location in Asia (either Singapore or Hong Kong) and then India. The company also just hired 28 new employees to allow it to move from just sustaining its quick growth to launching new features. The first of these new features (which is already in beta), is support for quickly launching pre-configured servers with basic LAMP setups and similar use cases.