What I actually look for in a VPS before running Docker workloads on it
Most "best VPS" posts rank providers by price per GB of RAM and call it done. That's a bad way to choose if you're actually going to run several Docker containers with a database, a reverse proxy, and background workers on the same box. Here's what actually matters once you're past the "spin up one container" stage.
1. Disk I/O, not just disk size
If you're running Postgres in a container alongside everything else, I/O contention is the thing that bites first — not CPU, not RAM. Budget providers on shared storage tiers will feel fine until you add a second database-backed app, then everything slows down together. NVMe-backed plans are worth paying slightly more for the moment you're running more than one stateful service.
2. Snapshot and backup pricing
Easy to forget until you need it. Hetzner's snapshot pricing is cheap enough that you can snapshot before every risky deploy without thinking about cost. Some budget providers charge enough per GB that you end up skipping backups — which is exactly backwards.
3. Network setup for multi-container stacks
If you're running Traefik + multiple app containers + a database, you want private networking between containers (Docker handles this fine internally) but also want to know egress/bandwidth caps if any of your apps proxy outbound traffic or serve media.
Hetzner vs DigitalOcean, in practice
For a single multi-app Docker host — the exact pattern in our Traefik routing guide — Hetzner's CX line consistently wins on price-to-performance for EU-based workloads, with solid NVMe and cheap snapshots. DigitalOcean is worth it when you want the wider ecosystem (managed databases, App Platform, more regions) or your users are mostly US-based — it costs more for equivalent specs but the tooling around it is more mature.
The honest bottom line
For most self-hosted Docker setups — one VPS, a handful of containers, a reverse proxy — you don't need either provider's premium tier. Start on the cheapest NVMe plan, watch docker stats for a week, and upgrade the specific resource that's actually constrained instead of guessing upfront.