Hehe, I've been using different European-based dedicated server providers (including Hetzner, but also server4you, OVH, Strato) for 10-15 years as well, with va

Hehe, I've been using different European-based dedicated server providers (including Hetzner, but also server4you, OVH, Strato) for 10-15 years as well, with varying numbers of servers. All of this happened during the cloud revolution, and I've always been wondering "why would anybody pay these outrageous AWS prices?" - after all, the much-hyped scalability quickly becomes much less relevant if you can practically get 5x-10x the power and traffic in the form of dedicated servers at the same cost, plus the capability of quickly ordering a few more servers (which are automatically allocated to you from a pool of ready-to-use servers, this has been standard practice at dedicated hosting providers for quite some time now) and have them installed in a matter of minutes (provided you've automated your setup process). Sure, you'll have a harder time to get rid of the additional servers, since rentals are typically on a monthly basis, but - did I mention that you'll start with 5x-10x the power anyway, which greatly reduces the need for quick up/downscaling? Aside from huge customers like Dropbox, which most likely get deep discounts on AWS, I don't see who else could get a better deal out of AWS (or any similar cloud provider) than they would get by directly renting dedicated servers, even considering the much-hyped scalability factor (which most customers probably don't ever end up needing anyway, because...let's face it, there's just so much attention going around on the net, which means there can be just a very limited number of things that "go viral", while there are many, many more services competing for said attention out there). That's at least true for the European market. AFAIK, the US hosting market is a bit different and generally more expensive, so AWS might have a better price point with regard to the competition there.