[deadlyllama]

EC2 is pricey if it's all you're getting from AWS. If you have wierd requirements, colo may be a good option. Otherwise, just get a VPS or 3 and be done with it. You'll get a virtual KVM that lets you boot it off an ISO and set it up the way you want.

Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode, ... are long established VPS players.

I'm cheap and buy VPSes off deals on lowendtalk.com. e.g. my backups are on a VPS with 3TB disk, 2GB RAM, 1 vCPU, USD7/mo. I suspect your USD80/mo budget would stretch to something amazing, by comparison.

[linsomniac]

I'm familiar with Vultr, DO, Linode, none of them seem to have pricing that is compelling beyond EC2. OVH and Hetzner have some potentially compelling plans, but then I'm only saving a little bit.

The call-out for colo is largely to save me from having to engineer a setup at my house for getting my Dell R720 with 256GB RAM online (switching to bridging, setting up a firewall/load balancer with backup, segmenting the networks). That does become easier if I decide I'm ok with 1gig rather than bumping it up to 10gig.