Physical servers at other providers are almost universally cheaper than AWS. At AWS, you're paying for it to be in your same account, have access to your other AWS resources, etc.
EDIT: This is not to hate on AWS. I love AWS! (I do devops and infrastructure). Its to say, if you need what AWS offers, buy it. If you don't, architect your solution around other providers.
> At AWS, you're paying for it to be in your same account, have access to your other AWS resources, etc.
You're forgetting the biggest part: you're also paying for the flexibility. Subject to availability, you can provision and deprovision AWS resources at will, which gives you far greater granularity than you can do with your own hardware.
This flexibility enables you to save in the long run if you manager your resources appropriately, but it also comes at a per-unit premium.
Very much this. If you're starting out or have a very dynamic load pattern (Netflix), AWS is for you. If you have a fixed load pattern, you can see quite a bit savings going to dedicated hardware (Stackoverflow/Stackexchange).
There's a lot wrong with this. Availability when you're managing some servers in a rack in a Colo is a whole other kettle of fish to what you get with AWS. The key is how leverage those AWS resources in different zones and regions to avoid single points of failure. But that's so much harder outside of the cloud.
This is not intended to be silverbacking, condescending, anything like that at all: Have you ever tried to provide uptime with physical equipment?
I have been able to provide the same level of uptime over ~15 years (in various environments, ranging from corporate america to the department of energy to startups) with physical servers as I have with AWS. The initial capital expenditure outlay is higher, but its cheaper over 1-3 years than AWS.
AWS isn't the only solution out there. Its great for proof of concept, its great when you don't know how much capacity you're going to need, but it is very expensive comparatively.
EDIT: This is not to hate on AWS. I love AWS! (I do devops and infrastructure). Its to say, if you need what AWS offers, buy it. If you don't, architect your solution around other providers.