[markonen]

In this context it's useful to note that RDS instance pricing is ~50% higher than the pricing for the underlying EC2 instances. That 50% reflects the (pure software) value-add over EC2.

When someone like Heroku offers a competing product, the fact that the product is also being run on EC2 is only a part of the overall story. Over time, AWS will probably be less and less happy with earning just the bare infrastructure dollars for such use.

[merb]

> In this context it's useful to note that RDS instance pricing is ~50% higher than the pricing for the underlying EC2 instances. That 50% reflects the (pure software) value-add over EC2.

Just build a HA RDS Cluster yourself with Click and Scale, than you can sell it to me with ~25% higher prices than the EC2 instances. Btw. AWS RDS is cheaper than most other competitors like ElephantSQL.

[markonen]

Just stating a fact about their pricing (in the context of whether Heroku is a competitor or not). Not judging the relative value of the offerings at all. I'm an RDS user, FWIW.