ROI case study: DigitalOcean at Proton

December 22, 2025 - ROI Case Studies Z241

Proton achieved an ROI of 486 percent with a payback period of 2.6 months after implementing DigitalOcean as its cloud infrastructure platform. This transition from on-premises infrastructure delivered cost reductions of 56 percent across compute, storage, and backup operations. By migrating to DigitalOcean’s cloud platform, Proton eliminated infrastructure complexity, reduced DevOps team requirements by 46 percent, and enabled 30 to 35 percent productivity improvements in year one, with incremental gains of 5 to 7 percent in subsequent years. The implementation provided teams with SSD-based compute performance at 30 to 50 percent better value than hyperscaler alternatives considered, managed database and Kubernetes services, and regional infrastructure supporting data privacy compliance requirements. Combined with monthly billing predictability and automated scaling capabilities, these improvements positioned Proton to expand into two new market segments while reducing operational overhead and enabling business growth.