8 ms·

It's probably worth looking into the big cloud providers rather than the little guys. In Azure you can have an app service (a deployed app in any one of loads o

It's probably worth looking into the big cloud providers rather than the little guys. In Azure you can have an app service (a deployed app in any one of loads of languages without looking after the machine it sits on) with 1.75GB RAM for about $12 a month. Obviously your usage may vary and that will effect the price. But I get the feeling that the big players are cheaper than people think they are for small projects.

user5994461 6y ago
The big players have separate charges for bandwidth and disk and other hidden stuff. They are way more expensive than Digital Ocean / OVH all inclusive. Worse, the costs is unpredictable which makes them a no go for a side project, I can't risk accidentally getting a $1000 bill. As a real world example, I run a personal blog. If it were running on S3, my personal finance would have been obliterated when it got featured on HN and served 1+ TB of traffic.
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  Can HN really deliver enough traffic to a static site to cost a significant amount? I've had mildly popular posts on HN for my Netlify blog (John Carmack tweeted about it!) and not had to pay for bandwidth.
  - donmcronald 6y ago
    No. I don't think so. The concern for me is a lack of hard limit on spending on GCP, Azure, and AWS. If I screw up and allocate a bunch of resources unintentionally, I'm left holding the bill. That's a terrible setup for PaaS because all programming involves mistakes eventually, especially for new users learning the system. Granted, there are likely limits on accounts, but those are to protect the services from fraud, no to protect the user from overspending. The limits aren't well defined and it's not something you can rely on because MS might consider $10k / month a small account while it's a ton of money for me. Azure customers have been asking for hard limits on spending for 8 [1] years with radio silence for the last 5. There's a difference in goals I guess. If I spend more than expected I WANT things to break. Microsoft, Google, and Azure want me to spend unlimited amounts of money, even if I don't have it. At least AWS can be set up using a prepaid credit card so if I screw up they have to call me to collect their money and I negotiate. 1. https://feedback.azure.com/forums/170030-signup-and-billing/suggestions/3238796-spending-limit-or-maximum-cost-cap-for-azure https://feedback.azure.com/forums/170030-signup-and-billing/...
    - user5994461 6y ago
      Yes it can, if you consider hundreds of dollars a significant amount. I do. A good article is around 50k visits. The most I've done was 300k over a few days of going viral on HN/reddit/twitter/other. I published some stats there https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-page-how-much-traffic-do-you-get/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-p...
    - ev1 6y ago
      It's a difference in goals. - Hobby kid doesn't want to overpay, shut everything down - Business absolutely doesn't care about spend, if they get some kind of marketing result traffic spike they just want the site to stay up even if it blows the average budget Guess which one they optimise for?
      - FpUser 6y ago
        >"Business absolutely doesn't care about spend, if they get some kind of marketing result traffic spike they just want the site to stay up even if it blows the average budget" While this statement can be true in some cases I vividly remember bosses of largish (budget wise company) running around like headless chickens yelling to kill every running instance of service just because they were hit by way more "success" that they've planned for.
      - bleepblorp 6y ago
        Very large businesses might not care about spend, but pretty much everyone else does. Almost everyone will be unhappy if they're stuck with a six figure bill for non-converting visits because their site went viral. Everyone will be unhappy if they're stuck with a six figure bill because their site was used in a DDoS reflection attack, or got pwned and used in a DDoS attack directly. Everything I run on nickle-and-dime-to-death cloud services, such as AWS, won't even respond to unauthenticated requests (Nginx return 444, or reachable only via Wireguard) precisely to mitigate this risk. To do anything else is just financially irresponsible. I've even considered coding a kill switch that will shut down AWS instances if they exceed billing limits, but the fact that AWS charges a fee to check your spend via an API makes this awkward and speaks volumes about Amazon's motivations. Amazon's refusal to offer spending caps on AWS benefits Amazon and only Amazon.
  - mdoms 6y ago
    No. I once had a site hit #1 on HN. It was hosted on a Dreamhost shared VPC with Wordpress. It barely broke a sweat. I have no idea what these guys are doing who are having their sites bulldozed by HN traffic but it's worryingly common for something that should never happen.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      I've had #1 multiple times. I've had articles that stayed on the front page for multiple days. Wouldn't be surprised if I'm top 1% of personal bloggers on HN or something like that. I'd be shelling out AWS thousands of dollars over the years if I were using anything AWS, or more likely I'd be either broke or the blog would have crumbled under the traffic each time never going viral.
      - viraptor 6y ago
        That's simply not true. I hit #1 a few times with content hosted on S3. Ended up paying maybe extra $2 those months. I'd be worried if I hosted any large files that came with it, but just a blog post? Barely noticeable.
        user5994461 6y ago
        I have images in almost every post. Diagram, schemas, stock images, gif, anything. I guess you don't? The difference between $2 and $20 will strike when you start having pictures and with $200 the day you (accidentally) put a large image or GIF.
        viraptor 6y ago
        You can lose money accidentally in many ways. I agree you have to watch out, but still disagree with the number of people dismissing S3 as a quick way to bankruptcy if you get HN #1.
        NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  - brightball 6y ago
    I’ve had a couple of front page posts with good discussion. Generated about 35,000 unique visits over 24 hours.
- Slikey 6y ago
  You should be able to get the cost down significantly by caching on cloudflare. My company managed to deliver 99.9%+ from cloudflare for static pages and allowed us to serve large amounts of traffic from a small backend.
- westoncb 6y ago
  > If it were running on S3, my personal finance would have been obliterated when it got featured on HN and served 1+ TB of traffic. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it looks like 1 TB of outgoing traffic would be ~$90 https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ I've had things hit the HN front page a few times while just hosting on ec2 and never had a noticeable increase in charges. Then again, I wasn't hosting very large files.
  - ev1 6y ago
    If you do host large-ish files, even a couple MB JPGs, your personal finance wouldn't be happy. I've had some images hit reddit (hotlinked) and exceeded 10-15TB per image, and that cost under $10 at other (non-AWS/Azure/*) places.
  - todotask 6y ago
    I have a similar experience and using UpCloud VPS as been able to keep my cost down (less than $5/m or a cup of coffee)
- poxrud 6y ago
  Would cost ~$80 with cloudfront.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  I'm currently on AWS for my site and in the process of researching alternatives. I share your concern of something going wrong and being stuck with a huge bill. Someone pointed out that 1TB of outgoing traffic from Amazon EC2 would cost $90. I'm fortunate enough that that won't obliterate me, but I won't be happy if that happens. I'd rather my blog get hugged to death. Going viral isn't worth $90 to me. But I don't think DO really solves this problem either. They say they have spending caps in some of their marketing materials, but the finer print says that overage billing is $0.01/GB. Now that's a whole lot better than Amazon's $0.09/GB, but it's not a cap. DO can say they have "predictable pricing" because in the vast majority of the cases the "free allotment" that comes with your droplet is enough, so you never see a bandwidth charge, you pay the cost of your droplet and you're done. So yes, it's more predictable because Amazon would charge you $5.23 one month, $4.87 another month, and DO charges you $5 every month. But I'm not worried about the 99% case, I'm worried about the extreme scenario where I somehow go viral or get DOSed. And both options leave me exposed. That's not to say DO isn't a better deal for the hobbyist than AWS. The equivalent of DO's $5 droplet will run you much more on AWS, especially if you actually use the bandwidth they're allotting you. And the big 3 do a lot of nickel-and-diming, which is a nuisance compared to the simpler pricing model of the smaller providers.
SaltyBackendGuy 6y ago
Anecdotally. When I set up my account on Azure there was a bug in the web client that filled out my region to Canada. So I opened a support ticket and they said they can't change the region on my account and the workaround was to open another account with a different email =/.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  This is common to many companies. There are thousands of regulatory, taxation and licensing things that depend on the customers region, and it simply isn't practical to support a user journey that starts following one set of laws and then changes to any other. Companies that allow it almost certainly are not meeting all the relevant laws for those customers that do change region.

user5994461 6y ago

The big players have separate charges for bandwidth and disk and other hidden stuff. They are way more expensive than Digital Ocean / OVH all inclusive. Worse, the costs is unpredictable which makes them a no go for a side project, I can't risk accidentally getting a $1000 bill. As a real world example, I run a personal blog. If it were running on S3, my personal finance would have been obliterated when it got featured on HN and served 1+ TB of traffic.

earthboundkid 6y ago
Can HN really deliver enough traffic to a static site to cost a significant amount? I've had mildly popular posts on HN for my Netlify blog (John Carmack tweeted about it!) and not had to pay for bandwidth.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  No. I don't think so. The concern for me is a lack of hard limit on spending on GCP, Azure, and AWS. If I screw up and allocate a bunch of resources unintentionally, I'm left holding the bill. That's a terrible setup for PaaS because all programming involves mistakes eventually, especially for new users learning the system. Granted, there are likely limits on accounts, but those are to protect the services from fraud, no to protect the user from overspending. The limits aren't well defined and it's not something you can rely on because MS might consider $10k / month a small account while it's a ton of money for me. Azure customers have been asking for hard limits on spending for 8 [1] years with radio silence for the last 5. There's a difference in goals I guess. If I spend more than expected I WANT things to break. Microsoft, Google, and Azure want me to spend unlimited amounts of money, even if I don't have it. At least AWS can be set up using a prepaid credit card so if I screw up they have to call me to collect their money and I negotiate. 1. https://feedback.azure.com/forums/170030-signup-and-billing/suggestions/3238796-spending-limit-or-maximum-cost-cap-for-azure https://feedback.azure.com/forums/170030-signup-and-billing/...
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Yes it can, if you consider hundreds of dollars a significant amount. I do. A good article is around 50k visits. The most I've done was 300k over a few days of going viral on HN/reddit/twitter/other. I published some stats there https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-page-how-much-traffic-do-you-get/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-p...
  - ev1 6y ago
    It's a difference in goals. - Hobby kid doesn't want to overpay, shut everything down - Business absolutely doesn't care about spend, if they get some kind of marketing result traffic spike they just want the site to stay up even if it blows the average budget Guess which one they optimise for?
    - FpUser 6y ago
      >"Business absolutely doesn't care about spend, if they get some kind of marketing result traffic spike they just want the site to stay up even if it blows the average budget" While this statement can be true in some cases I vividly remember bosses of largish (budget wise company) running around like headless chickens yelling to kill every running instance of service just because they were hit by way more "success" that they've planned for.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      Very large businesses might not care about spend, but pretty much everyone else does. Almost everyone will be unhappy if they're stuck with a six figure bill for non-converting visits because their site went viral. Everyone will be unhappy if they're stuck with a six figure bill because their site was used in a DDoS reflection attack, or got pwned and used in a DDoS attack directly. Everything I run on nickle-and-dime-to-death cloud services, such as AWS, won't even respond to unauthenticated requests (Nginx return 444, or reachable only via Wireguard) precisely to mitigate this risk. To do anything else is just financially irresponsible. I've even considered coding a kill switch that will shut down AWS instances if they exceed billing limits, but the fact that AWS charges a fee to check your spend via an API makes this awkward and speaks volumes about Amazon's motivations. Amazon's refusal to offer spending caps on AWS benefits Amazon and only Amazon.
- mdoms 6y ago
  No. I once had a site hit #1 on HN. It was hosted on a Dreamhost shared VPC with Wordpress. It barely broke a sweat. I have no idea what these guys are doing who are having their sites bulldozed by HN traffic but it's worryingly common for something that should never happen.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    I've had #1 multiple times. I've had articles that stayed on the front page for multiple days. Wouldn't be surprised if I'm top 1% of personal bloggers on HN or something like that. I'd be shelling out AWS thousands of dollars over the years if I were using anything AWS, or more likely I'd be either broke or the blog would have crumbled under the traffic each time never going viral.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      That's simply not true. I hit #1 a few times with content hosted on S3. Ended up paying maybe extra $2 those months. I'd be worried if I hosted any large files that came with it, but just a blog post? Barely noticeable.
      - user5994461 6y ago
        I have images in almost every post. Diagram, schemas, stock images, gif, anything. I guess you don't? The difference between $2 and $20 will strike when you start having pictures and with $200 the day you (accidentally) put a large image or GIF.
        viraptor 6y ago
        You can lose money accidentally in many ways. I agree you have to watch out, but still disagree with the number of people dismissing S3 as a quick way to bankruptcy if you get HN #1.
        NikolaeVarius 6y ago
- brightball 6y ago
  I’ve had a couple of front page posts with good discussion. Generated about 35,000 unique visits over 24 hours.
Slikey 6y ago
You should be able to get the cost down significantly by caching on cloudflare. My company managed to deliver 99.9%+ from cloudflare for static pages and allowed us to serve large amounts of traffic from a small backend.
westoncb 6y ago
> If it were running on S3, my personal finance would have been obliterated when it got featured on HN and served 1+ TB of traffic. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it looks like 1 TB of outgoing traffic would be ~$90 https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ I've had things hit the HN front page a few times while just hosting on ec2 and never had a noticeable increase in charges. Then again, I wasn't hosting very large files.
- ev1 6y ago
  If you do host large-ish files, even a couple MB JPGs, your personal finance wouldn't be happy. I've had some images hit reddit (hotlinked) and exceeded 10-15TB per image, and that cost under $10 at other (non-AWS/Azure/*) places.
- todotask 6y ago
  I have a similar experience and using UpCloud VPS as been able to keep my cost down (less than $5/m or a cup of coffee)
poxrud 6y ago
Would cost ~$80 with cloudfront.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
names_are_hard 6y ago
I'm currently on AWS for my site and in the process of researching alternatives. I share your concern of something going wrong and being stuck with a huge bill. Someone pointed out that 1TB of outgoing traffic from Amazon EC2 would cost $90. I'm fortunate enough that that won't obliterate me, but I won't be happy if that happens. I'd rather my blog get hugged to death. Going viral isn't worth $90 to me. But I don't think DO really solves this problem either. They say they have spending caps in some of their marketing materials, but the finer print says that overage billing is $0.01/GB. Now that's a whole lot better than Amazon's $0.09/GB, but it's not a cap. DO can say they have "predictable pricing" because in the vast majority of the cases the "free allotment" that comes with your droplet is enough, so you never see a bandwidth charge, you pay the cost of your droplet and you're done. So yes, it's more predictable because Amazon would charge you $5.23 one month, $4.87 another month, and DO charges you $5 every month. But I'm not worried about the 99% case, I'm worried about the extreme scenario where I somehow go viral or get DOSed. And both options leave me exposed. That's not to say DO isn't a better deal for the hobbyist than AWS. The equivalent of DO's $5 droplet will run you much more on AWS, especially if you actually use the bandwidth they're allotting you. And the big 3 do a lot of nickel-and-diming, which is a nuisance compared to the simpler pricing model of the smaller providers.

SaltyBackendGuy 6y ago

Anecdotally. When I set up my account on Azure there was a bug in the web client that filled out my region to Canada. So I opened a support ticket and they said they can't change the region on my account and the workaround was to open another account with a different email =/.

londons_explore 6y ago
This is common to many companies. There are thousands of regulatory, taxation and licensing things that depend on the customers region, and it simply isn't practical to support a user journey that starts following one set of laws and then changes to any other. Companies that allow it almost certainly are not meeting all the relevant laws for those customers that do change region.