Which DigitalOcean Droplet size does a WordPress course site need?

The published tiers

DigitalOcean's Droplet pricing page listed these plans on 29 October 2026. Backups are extra: 20% of the Droplet price for weekly or 30% for daily. Bundled plans are billed per second with a monthly cap at the listed price.

What uses the memory on a WordPress Droplet

Three things compete for RAM. First, PHP-FPM workers: the PHP manual says pm.max_children sets the limit on the number of simultaneous requests that will be served, so it is effectively your concurrency ceiling for uncached pages. Each worker holds its own memory. Second, MySQL: the InnoDB buffer pool is set by innodb_buffer_pool_size, and the MySQL manual gives 128MB as its default size and shows it can be resized without restarting the server. Third, the operating system, web server and anything else you run, such as Redis or a backup agent.

Logged-in learners matter most because their lesson, quiz and progress requests usually skip page caching and go straight to PHP and MySQL. Anonymous marketing pages can often be served from cache and barely touch the workers.

• Measure memory per PHP worker on your current host or staging copy during real use, for example with ps sorted by resident memory for the php-fpm processes.
• Check the configured innodb_buffer_pool_size and how large your database is; a buffer pool larger than the data wastes RAM.
• Check free memory at your busiest hour, not at 3am.

Worked sizing example

These numbers are assumptions for illustration, not DigitalOcean figures or measurements of any real site. Replace each with your own.

Assume a live cohort of 150 learners in the same hour, each loading an uncached page every 45 seconds. That is 150 / 45 = about 3.3 requests per second. If an uncached lesson page takes 0.6 seconds of PHP time, about 3.3 x 0.6 = 2 workers are busy on average. Bursts are uneven, so allow roughly four times the average: 8 workers.

Assume each worker uses 90 MB, the buffer pool is set to 512 MB, and the OS, web server and Redis need 400 MB together. Memory needed: 8 x 90 = 720 MB, plus 512, plus 400 = 1,632 MB. On a 2 GiB (2,048 MB) Droplet that leaves about 400 MB, too little for a backup job or a traffic spike. The 4 GiB plan leaves about 2.4 GB of headroom, and its 2 vCPUs give eight workers fewer cores to queue behind than the 1 vCPU plans.

Shared or dedicated CPU

DigitalOcean's plan guide recommends Basic Droplets for low-traffic web servers, blogs and forums, content management systems and small databases, and describes them as suiting low to medium load with occasional bursts. For production workloads where time is of the essence, it advises dedicated CPU Droplets, and suggests them when benchmarking shows performance is too variable.

For a course site, the practical test is whether response times during a scheduled live session stay steady. If a $24 Basic Droplet is fine on average but slows unpredictably during peaks with memory to spare, the $63 General Purpose plan with 2 dedicated vCPUs is the next comparison, though it has only 25 GiB of disk.

Resize rules that shape your first choice

• A CPU-and-RAM-only resize leaves the disk unchanged, so you can scale back down later.
• A resize that includes disk permanently increases the disk; DigitalOcean states you cannot decrease a Droplet's disk size.
• You can only resize to a plan with equal or greater disk than the original, so starting on a large-disk plan limits later downsizing.
• The control panel requires the Droplet to be powered off first; plan for about one minute of downtime per GB of used disk, often less.
• DigitalOcean strongly recommends taking a snapshot before resizing.
• Practical rule: start at $12 or $24, schedule CPU-and-RAM resizes at a quiet hour, and add a volume for bulky files rather than growing the disk.

Sizing checklist

• Record peak concurrent logged-in learners and their busiest hour.
• Measure memory per PHP worker and average uncached response time on a copy of the real site.
• Set pm.max_children so workers times memory per worker fits the RAM left after MySQL and the OS.
• Size the buffer pool to your database, not to a guess.
• Add daily backups (30% of the Droplet price) to the budget.
• Load test a staging Droplet with a realistic logged-in scenario before launch day.

Sources & verification

Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.

1. DigitalOcean: Droplet pricing Accessed 29 Oct 2026
2. DigitalOcean: Choosing a Droplet plan Accessed 29 Oct 2026
3. DigitalOcean: How to resize Droplets Accessed 29 Oct 2026
4. PHP manual: FPM configuration Accessed 29 Oct 2026
5. MySQL 8.4 Reference Manual: Configuring InnoDB buffer pool size Accessed 29 Oct 2026