[ComputerGuru]

For Windows servers, Joyent is prohibitively more expensive than EC2... though their Linux prices trounce AWS' significantly. I wonder why that is. They also don't offer anything smaller than "medium".

Does anyone know a good cloud-based Windows host as an alternative to AWS?

[facorreia]

I presume you've tried Windows Azure?

[ComputerGuru]

Azure IaaS is even more expensive on a small scale (though it does get cheaper as you scale up). Azure PaaS would fit the bill very nicely, but someone at MS completely dropped the ball: you have no option of using SSL + your own domain!

You can have either your own domain name or SSL w/ their subdomain.

Who the bleep would settle for that? What kind of "enterprise solution" is this?

[facorreia]

You probably mean the Azure Websites service. It doesn't support SSL on custom domains yet, but it's a preview version. That feature is expected before this service is released.

The PaaS offer per se is called Hosted Services and it does support SSL on custom domains.[1]

The price for the IaaS offer for a small Windows VM is $0.08/h ($57.60/month).[2] EC2 pricing for a small Windows VM is $0.115/h ($82.80/month).[3]

[1] https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/common-tasks/...

[2] https://www.windowsazure.com/pt-br/pricing/calculator/?scena...

[3] http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

[rplnt]

Isn't azure more of a PaaS than a IaaS?

[icebraining]

It has both: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/#virtual-m...