[mavsman]

Different strokes for different folks.

This has been one of the big knocks on AWS, that a poor little old lady can setup a "free" AWS account then when her website (and accompanying Lambda function) goes viral she gets hit with a $100k bill from uncle Jeff.

[rmbyrro]

Would the Lady prefer to let her site go down?

I don't understand this way of thinking. One of the main benefits of serverless is scalability, peace of mind for precisely when you go viral.

If you're doing something good, especially if you're selling something good, all you want is to go viral. And of you went viral, you don't mind paying the AWS costs, which should be tiny compared to your revenue. Just need to care about your unit economics.

[yurishimo]

Sure, but I think the GP was referring to a situation where revenue doesn’t match the traffic.

Imagine the grandma scenario. Let’s say that she cooks and sells artisanal jams and jellies. With the help of her granddaughter, she creates a TikTok that goes viral. Her web store immediately sells out, and the traffic from the video hammers her website. She cannot react fast enough to enable back orders and so most of those visits go to waste.

Putting aside the technical absurdities (why is she hosting on a lambda, etc), in this scenario, grandma is up a creek.

If this scenario were real, I would feel really bad for the grandma with a huge bill and not enough revenue to cover it, but I would be livid at whatever imbecile decided to set her up with such a ridiculous hosting paradigm.

“But it only costs pennies a month to run!*”

Yeah, until she goes viral. This scenario right here is why services like Squarespace et al are still valuable. You’ll pay a few extra bucks a month, but if you go viral, you won’t go bankrupt when the bill is due.

[rmbyrro]

Then get peoples emails to notify when stock is up again.

The worst thing it could happen is having your site down when many people want what you have.

In any business, the hardest part and most expensive, by far, is sales and marketing.

You wanna throw it all away to save 100 bucks on Amazon? That's insane!..

[tazard]

And how about a fun educational project you aren't expecting visitors for and make zero revenue from? AWS bills can far exceed 100 bucks. Paying thousands for... Exposure? That's insane!..