They increased what was provided in the old $5 a couple of times, before raising the price to $6, though.
Also, there’s a new $4 entry-tier droplet that has the same CPU, the same amount of ram and the same amount of storage as my $5 droplet used to: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets
The included bandwidth is only half as much (500GiB), but I suspect most people who would have gotten $5 droplets in the past will now be getting $4 ones.
Also, FWIW, I’ve load tested different VPSes between AWS, Linode and DO and found that for reasons I don’t understand, AWS ones perform considerably worse than the other two platforms VPSes with identically listed stats.
Try Scaleway, stardust. You can only have 2 but they are 2 euro a month. And free bandwidth. I really like them (Note: I have mentioned them several times in this thread but I have no affiliation or commercial interest - just a happy customer).
Also, there’s a new $4 entry-tier droplet that has the same CPU, the same amount of ram and the same amount of storage as my $5 droplet used to: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets
The included bandwidth is only half as much (500GiB), but I suspect most people who would have gotten $5 droplets in the past will now be getting $4 ones.