[joshmn]

> The bias towards AWS for this type of application is ridiculous and a big waste of money.

They could get an even better deal by just going through a dedicated server provider (or even better, colocating).

There's little advantage with choosing DO versus going with a dedicated server provider (and again, colocating). I guess the advantage would be the control panel that they wouldn't use, having a few one-click stacks that they won't use, stuff like that.

If someone can afford a $7,000 AWS bill they can afford to put some money towards hardware and an onApp license if they want "cloudy" stuff. To colocate their hardware it would probably run them anywhere from $400-$800 a month depending on where they go. Their total bill would be decreased by $5500 a month. The upfront investment of the hardware wouldn't be more than $12,000 either. LOE? Probably two weeks with a competent sysadmin.

Yes you can have issues with your hardware and stuff and then you have to take care of that, but if you're good with your DC, they're great to you.

[vacri]

at $600/month you've only saved them $1500/month (the hosting portion is only $2.1k), and now they also have physical hardware to manage, requiring a broader skillset from the volunteers, plus someone having to be in physical proximity for 'on-call' issues.

I don't know what datacentres tend to charge for data transfer, but as that's the largest item on the bill, it's the more salient point.

Also, just because it's not on the bill doesn't mean they're not using other AWS services; there are several free ones.

[ceejayoz]

> To colocate their hardware it would probably run them anywhere from $400-$800 a month depending on where they go.

For one datacenter, but CloudFront gets you 40+.

[gaadd33]

Bandwidth is by far their biggest cost, colocation/dedicated hosting would save a substantial amount but you are still going to be looking at something in the ballpark of $1,000/mo for 1Gbps. (Unless Cogent has slashed prices even further)