Digital Ocean is cool and everything, however they're new to the cloud hosting industry. Take for instance Rackspace or AWS, they've been around for a long time and they can command a high price due to their longevity and also can charge higher prices because their target customers are not as price sensitive as you. Rackspace in particular can charge higher fees because of their support and SLAs, if there is a problem you can't figure out, and you have some money to spend they can find some one to fix it for your organization.

The longevity doesn't mean much in the world of hosting, it's like the disclaimer that you see when looking at financial products: "past results do not guarantee future performance".

The advantage of a "old" hosting company is that it's less likely to go out of business in a heartbeat, it's not necessarily enough to convince me in paying more for the same services that I can get elsewhere.

Oh I agree, I just wish they offered a different tier or something around half their current prices. I'd be willing to pay more to host with Rackspace as I've had great experiences with them in the past, but I just plain can't afford to host my current project with them.