DigitalOcean Basics Cheat Sheet

Covers DigitalOcean's core products including Droplets, App Platform, Spaces, and Managed Databases, with doctl CLI examples.

1 PageBeginnerFeb 10, 2026

Core Products

DigitalOcean's main service offerings.

Droplet- A virtual machine instance, DigitalOcean's core compute product
App Platform- PaaS for deploying apps directly from a Git repo without managing servers
Spaces- S3-compatible object storage with a built-in CDN
Managed Databases- Hosted PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis/Valkey, and MongoDB with automated backups
DOKS- DigitalOcean Kubernetes Service, a managed Kubernetes offering
Volumes- Block storage that can be attached to Droplets, resizable independently

doctl CLI: Manage Droplets

Create, list, and delete Droplets from the command line.

bash

doctl auth init                              # authenticate the CLIdoctl compute droplet create my-droplet \  --region nyc1 \  --image ubuntu-22-04-x64 \  --size s-1vcpu-1gb \  --ssh-keys <fingerprint>doctl compute droplet list                   # list all dropletsdoctl compute droplet delete my-droplet      # delete a droplet

App Platform Spec (app.yaml)

Declarative config for deploying a service on App Platform.

yaml

name: my-appservices:  - name: web    github:      repo: my-org/my-repo      branch: main    build_command: npm run build    run_command: npm start    http_port: 8080    instance_size_slug: basic-xxs    instance_count: 1

Pro Tip

Use DigitalOcean's snapshot feature before major Droplet changes — snapshots are billed per GB and far cheaper than losing hours to a botched in-place upgrade with no rollback path.

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