DigitalOcean Inc. is stepping up its efforts to court startups. The infrastructure-as-a-service provider today launched a program called Hatch that offers eligible teams $100,000 worth of free cloud resources plus training materials, priority support and other assistance.

The initative aims to level the playing field against better-established providers like Amazon Inc. that are also trying to lure startups with six-figure credit packages. Jeff Bezos’ firm gives $100,000 vouchers to teams backed by certain investors while Microsoft and Google, its two biggest competitors in the public cloud, offer up to $120,000. All three vendors have the same objective:  Turning the participating teams into paying customers by the time they use up all their cloud credits.

DigitalOcean will have a harder time playing the long game since it currently lacks many of the advanced featured offered by the competition, which may make it difficult for Hatch participants to scale their deployments as their operations grow. But the provider also has a couple of unique advantages working in its favor that should make its cloud appealing to young teams in the early stages of the startup journey.

The first is the platform’s relatively simple management interface, which can make it easier and thus faster to set up a deployment than enterprise-oriented platforms like AWS. Plus, many founders with a technical background are already familiar with DigitalOcean given its tremendous popularity in the developer ecosystem. The other factor that makes Hatch appealing is more straightforward: The provider promises to provide mentorship and personalized advice to teams that participate in the program.

DigitalOcean is currently testing the program with 100 select startups as part of a 30-day beta trial designed to find areas for improvements and fine-tune eligibility requirements.

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