The cloud migration ROI reality check: when moving providers actually pays off

"We could save 30-40% by switching cloud providers." It's a compelling pitch. And technically, it's often true. But what happens when you factor in the actual cost of getting there?

After conducting detailed research into migrating from Azure to DigitalOcean for a typical SMB workload, we discovered something that might surprise you: the full migration has a negative ROI over three years. Yes, you read that correctly. Despite genuine savings of over 30% on monthly costs, the maths doesn't work out for wholesale migration in most scenarios.

This isn't a post designed to discourage cloud migration. It's designed to help you make a genuinely informed decision rather than one based on optimistic spreadsheets and vendor marketing.

The seductive promise of cloud savings

Let's start with the numbers that make cloud migration look attractive. Our research compared a typical SMB workload on Azure versus DigitalOcean.

Monthly cost comparison

Workload	Azure	DigitalOcean	Monthly Savings
CMS hosting (2 sites)	£118	£79	£39 (33%)
Platform (5 APIs, databases)	£180	£122	£58 (32%)
Combined	£298	£201	£97 (33%)

At first glance, this looks excellent. Save nearly £100 per month just by switching providers. Over three years, that's £3,492 in savings. What's not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out.

The migration investment nobody mentions

Here's where the business case starts to look less rosy. Migration isn't free. It requires significant investment in time, expertise, and risk management.

Realistic migration costs

Technical migration (80-120 hours)

Breaking this down into actual work:

Infrastructure provisioning and configuration: 16 hours
Data migration (databases, object storage): 16 hours
Application deployment and testing: 32 hours
CI/CD pipeline migration: 16 hours
Documentation and knowledge transfer: 16 hours

At internal rates of £50/hour, that's £4,000-6,000. Using external consultants at £100/hour pushes it to £8,000-12,000.

Training and knowledge transfer (24 hours)

Your team needs to learn a new platform. Even if DigitalOcean is simpler than Azure (and it generally is), there's still a learning curve.

Internal training time: £1,200
External training option: £2,000-3,000

Contingency buffer (20%)

Things go wrong. Dependencies you didn't know about surface. The documentation turns out to be incomplete. Budget £1,000-3,000 for the unexpected.

Total migration investment

Approach	Low Estimate	High Estimate
Internal team	£6,200	£10,200
External consultant	£11,000	£18,000
Conservative mid-point	£10,000

We'll use £10,000 as our working figure. It's realistic without being pessimistic.

The ROI reality

Now let's do the maths that matters: when does the migration actually pay for itself?

The payback calculation

Annual savings: £1,164 (£97 x 12 months)
Migration investment: £10,000
Payback period: 10,000 / 1,164 = 8.6 months

An 8.6-month payback sounds reasonable. But here's where it gets interesting.

Three-year net position

Investment: £10,000
Gross savings: £3,492
Net benefit: -£6,508

That's not a typo. Over three years, the full migration loses money. The savings don't cover the cost of getting there.

Five-year net position

Investment: £10,000
Gross savings: £5,820
Net benefit: -£4,180

Still underwater after five years.

Ten-year net position

Investment: £10,000
Gross savings: £11,640
Net benefit: +£1,640

Finally, after a decade, you're in the black. But only just.

The uncomfortable truth

For full migration to make financial sense, you need to commit to the new provider for at least 8-10 years before seeing meaningful returns. Most organisations don't plan infrastructure decisions on that timescale.

What the simple ROI ignores

The numbers above tell only part of the story. Several factors make the actual picture even more complex.

Hidden costs rarely quantified

Productivity loss during transition

Even the smoothest migration disrupts your team. Developers learning a new platform are slower for weeks or months. Operations staff deal with unfamiliar tooling. These productivity hits are real but rarely appear in migration business cases.

Opportunity cost

Every hour your team spends on migration is an hour not spent on features, improvements, or revenue-generating work. For a small team, this trade-off is particularly sharp.

Risk premium

What if the migration hits unexpected problems? Service disruption during cutover. Performance issues that only appear under production load. Data integrity problems discovered weeks later. These risks have real costs even if they don't materialise.

The intangible benefits (be honest about them)

Migration advocates often cite benefits that are genuine but hard to quantify:

Simpler operations: DigitalOcean's reduced complexity versus Azure's sprawling service catalogue
Developer experience: Better documentation, cleaner interfaces, faster deployment cycles
Vendor diversification: Reduced dependence on a single provider

These benefits are real. They're just not cash. Include them in your decision framework, but don't pretend they offset hard costs.

The smarter approach: phased strategy

Given the maths, a wholesale migration rarely makes sense. But that doesn't mean you should ignore the cost-saving opportunity entirely.

Phase 1: New projects only (immediate positive ROI)

Investment: £1,000-2,000 (training, documentation)
Savings: £97/month per new workload
Risk: Low

If you're starting a new project on DigitalOcean, you can sign up with $200 in free credits to cover your initial evaluation period at no cost.

This is the strategy with the best risk/reward ratio. You gain:

Immediate cost savings on new projects
Real-world experience with the new platform
No disruption to existing production systems
Optionality to migrate existing workloads later

Financial outcome over three years:

Investment: £2,000
Savings (assuming 2 new projects): £2,328+
Net benefit: +£328 minimum

More importantly, you've validated the platform with actual workloads before making bigger commitments.

Phase 2: Pilot migration (data-driven validation)

Investment: £3,000-5,000
Timeline: 2-3 months
Risk: Low-medium

Select one non-critical workload for migration. This gives you:

Real migration experience (not theoretical planning)
Accurate cost data to compare against projections
Team competency building on a lower-stakes project
Evidence base for decisions about broader migration

Go/no-go criteria after pilot:

Did actual savings match projections?
What unexpected issues emerged?
How did the team find the experience?
What would we do differently next time?

Phase 3: Data-driven full migration (only if justified)

Proceed only if:

Pilot validated cost savings
Team is comfortable with the platform
5+ year commitment is realistic
Migration complexity is manageable

Don't proceed if:

Pilot revealed hidden costs or complexity
Team strongly prefers existing platform
Business plans are uncertain beyond 2-3 years
Existing Azure integrations are deep

Decision framework: when migration makes sense

After analysing the numbers, here's a pragmatic framework for cloud migration decisions.

Migration likely makes sense if:

You're deploying new projects (no migration cost)
You have a 5+ year planning horizon
Workloads are containerised and portable
You have minimal vendor-specific dependencies
Your team values simplicity over feature breadth
Cost optimisation is a strategic priority

Migration probably doesn't make sense if:

You need payback within 3 years
You have deep Azure integrations (Key Vault, Cognitive Services, AD)
Your workloads have complex dependencies
Team capacity is already stretched
Business plans are uncertain or short-term
You're risk-averse about infrastructure changes

The hybrid sweet spot

For many organisations, the right answer isn't "migrate everything" or "stay put." It's strategic use of both platforms:

Use DigitalOcean for	Keep Azure for
New containerised projects	Existing stable workloads
Development/staging environments	Azure-specific services
Cost-sensitive workloads	Enterprise integrations
Simple web applications	Complex legacy systems

This approach captures cost savings on new work without the risk and expense of migrating established systems.

Risk factors to quantify

Before finalising any migration business case, ensure you've accounted for these often-overlooked risks.

Team productivity during transition

Factor in 2-4 weeks of reduced productivity per team member learning the new platform. For a team of 4 at £50/hour, that's an additional £4,000-8,000 in hidden cost.

Service disruption risk

Even with "zero-downtime" migration approaches, there's always some risk. DNS propagation alone typically requires 15-30 minutes of uncertainty. What's the cost if something goes wrong and you need to roll back?

Knowledge concentration

After migration, who knows how to run the new platform? If that knowledge sits with one person who leaves, what's your exposure?

Vendor viability

DigitalOcean is a solid company (NASDAQ listed, $230M quarterly revenue, 16% YoY growth). But it's 1-1.5% of the cloud market versus Azure's 23%. For a 10-year commitment, have you considered the tail risk?

Making the decision

Cloud migration decisions often get made emotionally. Engineers prefer simpler platforms. Finance loves projected savings. Leadership wants to appear progressive.

The pragmatic path cuts through this noise:

Default new projects to the cheaper platform where appropriate
Run a genuine pilot before committing to broad migration
Accept that some workloads should stay put where migration cost exceeds benefit
Measure actual results against projections before expanding migration scope
Revisit the decision annually as circumstances change

Conclusion: the pragmatic path

Cloud migration can absolutely deliver value. But wholesale provider switches rarely make financial sense unless you're committing for a decade or more.

The smarter approach:

New projects: Deploy to DigitalOcean (or your preferred alternative) by default
Existing workloads: Migrate selectively based on individual ROI calculations
Decision making: Use real data from pilots, not vendor marketing

The 30-40% savings are genuine. Getting there without spending more than you save is the hard part.

Want a realistic assessment of your cloud options?

We help organisations cut through cloud vendor marketing to make evidence-based infrastructure decisions. Whether you're evaluating a migration, optimising existing cloud spend, or planning new deployments, we provide the pragmatic analysis that leads to better outcomes.

Schedule a cloud strategy review to discuss your specific situation.

This analysis is based on research conducted in Q4 2025, comparing Azure and DigitalOcean for typical SMB workloads in the UK market. Your specific costs and savings will vary based on workload characteristics, team capabilities, and business requirements.

Disclosure: Links to DigitalOcean in this article are referral links. If you sign up and spend $25, we receive a small credit. This doesn't affect our analysis - as this article demonstrates, we prioritise honest assessment over promotional content.

The Cloud Migration ROI Reality Check: When Moving Providers Actually Pays Off