I've never found cloud anything to beat the speed (and price) of a well placed server.
DO has always been a bit rich for my blood though, and even a low cost hetzner VPS has less cores than I remember seeing at the same price a decade ago. I could be wrong there though I usually use Vultr for their SYD region.
> has less cores than I remember seeing at the same price a decade ago
Less cores but probably 5x more performance per core now.