In reply to Dean.

As far as digitalocean goes, unless Forge washes and waxes your car on a monthly basis I would think its usefulness is greatly diminished after one use. Or am I missing something?

Pretty much: if you're looking for one-time use, then it's worth learning how to do it yourself, or you could use something like 'EasyEngine', or a pre-configured image, for subsequent provisioning (because everyone should really learn how to do this themselves, if they're going to do it at all).

If, however, you're managing more than one domain, WordPress install, SSL certificate, and so on, and know you'll be managing more in the future, then that's where something like this (or ServerPilot) might start to make sense. This is the situation I'm in, and the cost of the service (ServerPilot for me) is less than what I would be otherwise spending in time.