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Comment by markwillis82 | Hacker News Reader

As a recently new customer to AWS. This service sounds really useful.

Quite possibly one of the best pricing pages[1] I've seen in a while too.

If I'd had the forethought to build up a sock puppet HN account before writing the article, this is the comment I'd use it to write.

Thanks for that. Now I have two sites getting pummeled at once.

Every new venture needs to fill three roles: the technical founder, the business person, and the comedian.

and sock puppet

That role isn't covered by the business person?

/s ;P

because pets can't drive [1]

[1] http://www.forbes.com/2000/11/07/1107pets.html

So, does his post qualify him for the Cheap Bastard Plan?

Your pricing page was fun to read, thanks

AWS pricing is crazy complicated. I gave a presentation on this a few years ago (https://speakerdeck.com/jpsingleton/aws-pricing). It may be a bit out of date by now but I could update it and write it up as a blog post if people are interested?

I spent many hours with the cost calculator going through with our support company trying to find a _rough_ estimate of what our bills would be compared to Rackspace.

It's not easy initially but things like http://www.ec2instances.info/ definitely help.

> AWS pricing is crazy complicated.

I agree strongly with this. I've had clients before who would refuse to make the move up from VPSs despite numerous advantages because the AWS product descriptions and prices were incomprehensible to them.

It's not hard. Just figure out what your costs would be on dedicated or colocated hardware. Then multiply by 10.

Everything is hard if you try it for the first time.

I'd love to read an update if you're willing to put the time into it.

OK, I'll add it to the list and might combine it with some thoughts on vendor lock-in.

Thank you!

Part 1 of 3 is up: https://unop.uk/on-aws-vs-azure-vendor-lock-in-and-pricing-c...

I'm not sure but I noticed it linked from somewhere else. Thanks for posting this! I'm looking forward to the additional parts.

It really is. Moving from RDS to Aurora was easier because we already had the metric data from AWS that we needed to make calculations. Moving from anywhere else would have been scary.

Definitely do it. I need someone to explain it too me. Too many ifs ands and buts for it to make sense.

It's a hilarious page, but I wouldn't call it "informatively" good, you can't easily eyeball the difference between the plans in the way the good ol' pricing grid would show.

There's a pretty 3-column pricing grid sitting unused on the server, after a day of painstaking pixel nudging then 30 days of pummeling in an A/B test against that ugly wall of text you see today.

I'm as surprised as you. But I'm not arguing against math.

> There's a pretty 3-column pricing grid sitting unused on the server, after a day of painstaking pixel nudging then 30 days of pummeling in an A/B test against that ugly wall of text you see today.

That's really interesting; how big was the difference and what do you think the source of the difference was?

I love how you repeatedly shame the cheap bastards who "cannot" afford a $10 service into taking the paying plan while still giving them the option to take the cheap bastard plan. :)

Because science! I love your response and creativity in making that page. It resonates with your audience.

I found it easy to eyeball, but it might depend on your monitor size? My monitor is big so the whole page was visible at once when I opened it.

* Less than 200,000 hits per day - $10 / month

* Less than 5 Million hits per day - $50 / month

* Over 5 Million hits per day - $300 / month

> We were initially hoping to provide this service free of charge.

Huh, the blog post doesn't make it seem like he was 'initially hoping' to do that at all.

I guess it's good marketing to make it seem like you just "need some help to cover our expenses," and aren't actually making a profit?

That hope did indeed exist, but it faded after a month or two when the first big accounts started to sign up. If you dig around enough you can find a version of that silly pricetag graphic on the server from when I hoped to cover those server expenses for $1/month.

But you're right. Sense prevailed, and I eventually started charging money in exchange for goods and services.

>>But you're right. Sense prevailed, and I eventually started charging money in exchange for goods and services.

MADNESS!

This is one of those services that looks do perfectly executed I'm surprised they haven't been bought out by Amazon.

Looks like a great dev and a polished product.

I would have liked to have seen a call to action button at each price point.

I love the idea of the cheap bastard plan.

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