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Deploy ASP.NET Core to DigitalOcean

Simple pricing and a developer-friendly console.

DigitalOcean has the simplest console of any provider here, and the widest choice of US regions — a comfortable default if you’ve never used a cloud provider before.

1. Create the account

Sign up at digitalocean.com with GitHub or an email address, and add a card or PayPal. Check Billing afterward — you’ll see a small automatic credit, or a larger one if you signed up through a promo link.

2. Create the API key

Go to cloud.digitalocean.com/account/api/tokens and click Generate New Token. Give it a name and an expiration, then scope it to the droplet (create/read/update/delete), ssh_key (create/read/delete), regions, sizes and image (read) permissions — nothing else. Copy the token — DigitalOcean only shows it once.

3. Connect it in DotDeployer

In DotDeployer, go to Settings → Providers → Connect a provider → DigitalOcean, enter a name, and paste in the token. Click Test connection, then Connect. The token is encrypted at rest, and DotDeployer only ever calls the Droplet-management endpoints it needs.

4. Point your domain at the server

Once DotDeployer has provisioned your Droplet and shows its IP, go to your DNS provider — Cloudflare DNS if that’s where your domain lives — and add an A record for your site’s hostname pointing at that IP. If you’re on Cloudflare, leave the record’s proxy status DNS only (the cloud icon grey, not orange): the Let’s Encrypt certificate request needs to reach your Droplet directly, and Cloudflare’s proxy breaks that handshake. On another DNS host, add the same plain A record — there’s no proxy setting to worry about there. Then add the domain under the site’s Settings tab in DotDeployer, which requests and renews the certificate automatically.