6 ms·

After my experience 3 years ago, I will never use them again. I priced out an instance that estimated around $30/month via their calculator. Instance is indee

After my experience 3 years ago, I will never use them again. I priced out an instance that estimated around $30/month via their calculator. Instance is indeed around $30 for the first 2 months, then I get a $200 bill. I don't know what the hell happened, but it was over 6x what I had budgeted. I tried to get someone to review my account, but I didn't get a response and just had to suck it up. I paid the $200 and moved on. Never again, I'll use Linode or something else instead. I clearly did something wrong, but the process was so confusing that I couldn't tell you what it was. It probably had to do with running the server at sub-optimal times when rates were higher, but I don't remember reading anything about that. It was a Windows-based game server, so the extra cpu overhead might have had something to do with it.

bradknowles 5y ago
With AWS, you can set up billing rules to notify you of any charges over any limit you want, and you can break that down by service or overall charges, etc…. You learn a lot about this process when you become an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Sadly, they don’t turn these things on by default. You have to know about them in advance, and you have to know how to configure them. That’s one thing I wish they would improve.
whalesalad 5y ago
The disk you attach to an instance is not free, and capacity/performance characteristics dictate price.
- bstar77 5y ago
  It's possible that was the issue, but I estimated a 20gb storage partition. Maybe usage was to blame, I know the server was inefficient with reads and writes.
  - kondro 5y ago
    But what did you actually assign? EBS volumes are priced based on provisioned capacity (including throughput if you choose io2 volumes).
    - bstar77 5y ago
      I just don't remember the details. As I said earlier, it's likely I made a mistake, but the process was not clear and I was not notified when my instance expense ballooned to something I clearly wasn't expecting. I never had these kinds of issues with Heroku, Linode or any other host.
nix23 5y ago
Just try Oracle Cloud believe me...it's so much better.
- danielheath 5y ago
  It’s not any more straightforward to use IME, and I have had an instance vanish without a trace in the past 4 months. It is, however, far cheaper and has more transparent pricing.
  - nix23 5y ago
    > It’s not any more straightforward to use IME, and I have had an instance vanish without a trace in the past 4 months. It's called administrating on whisky ;)
rmason 5y ago
I'm using Google Fi. Once I exceed my paid for bandwidth level for a given month it notifies me. When I go 50% over it notifies me a second time. If I want to know the bandwidth used I can check it anytime I want on my phone. Considering the huge amount of developers having problems of this kind how hard would it be for AWS to implement a similar system?
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  How hard? Bees against honey hard.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Other providers let users put billing limits on their accounts. Seems like Amazon benefits when users aren't able to put a $30 a month limit on their accounts like the OP wanted to.
  - st3fan 5y ago
    You are just making stuff up. AWS has all those things. Billing limits. Cost monitoring. It is all there.
    - post-it 5y ago
      AWS does not have billing limits.
    - ncann 5y ago
      Billing limits, as in, a hard limit over which resources will shut down and I can be sure I won't be charged over that limit? I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist.
    - Etheryte 5y ago
      If you have to be a domain expert to configure it correctly, as is clearly the case with AWS since configuring it is a whole separate industry, then for all intents and purposes it is not there as far as a regular user is concerned. If it helps, imagine a Cessna pilot who's suddenly asked to fly a big intercontinental aircraft without any of the assistance features turned on. All the controls are there, but as far as the Cessna pilot is concerned, they can't fly it.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
There goes a call for thousands of MBA hacks to slither into this mess and create more mess and call it "value creation"
jsemrau 5y ago
A fellow Linode aficionado! I had a similar experience as you. You are getting lured in by the free tier, but then this paid additional service is needed and that paid on top. Didn't work for me at all.

bradknowles 5y ago

With AWS, you can set up billing rules to notify you of any charges over any limit you want, and you can break that down by service or overall charges, etc…. You learn a lot about this process when you become an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Sadly, they don’t turn these things on by default. You have to know about them in advance, and you have to know how to configure them. That’s one thing I wish they would improve.

whalesalad 5y ago

The disk you attach to an instance is not free, and capacity/performance characteristics dictate price.

bstar77 5y ago
It's possible that was the issue, but I estimated a 20gb storage partition. Maybe usage was to blame, I know the server was inefficient with reads and writes.
- kondro 5y ago
  But what did you actually assign? EBS volumes are priced based on provisioned capacity (including throughput if you choose io2 volumes).
  - bstar77 5y ago
    I just don't remember the details. As I said earlier, it's likely I made a mistake, but the process was not clear and I was not notified when my instance expense ballooned to something I clearly wasn't expecting. I never had these kinds of issues with Heroku, Linode or any other host.

nix23 5y ago

Just try Oracle Cloud believe me...it's so much better.

danielheath 5y ago
It’s not any more straightforward to use IME, and I have had an instance vanish without a trace in the past 4 months. It is, however, far cheaper and has more transparent pricing.
- nix23 5y ago
  > It’s not any more straightforward to use IME, and I have had an instance vanish without a trace in the past 4 months. It's called administrating on whisky ;)

rmason 5y ago

I'm using Google Fi. Once I exceed my paid for bandwidth level for a given month it notifies me. When I go 50% over it notifies me a second time. If I want to know the bandwidth used I can check it anytime I want on my phone. Considering the huge amount of developers having problems of this kind how hard would it be for AWS to implement a similar system?

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
How hard? Bees against honey hard.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Other providers let users put billing limits on their accounts. Seems like Amazon benefits when users aren't able to put a $30 a month limit on their accounts like the OP wanted to.
- st3fan 5y ago
  You are just making stuff up. AWS has all those things. Billing limits. Cost monitoring. It is all there.
  - post-it 5y ago
    AWS does not have billing limits.
  - ncann 5y ago
    Billing limits, as in, a hard limit over which resources will shut down and I can be sure I won't be charged over that limit? I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist.
  - Etheryte 5y ago
    If you have to be a domain expert to configure it correctly, as is clearly the case with AWS since configuring it is a whole separate industry, then for all intents and purposes it is not there as far as a regular user is concerned. If it helps, imagine a Cessna pilot who's suddenly asked to fly a big intercontinental aircraft without any of the assistance features turned on. All the controls are there, but as far as the Cessna pilot is concerned, they can't fly it.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

There goes a call for thousands of MBA hacks to slither into this mess and create more mess and call it "value creation"

jsemrau 5y ago

A fellow Linode aficionado! I had a similar experience as you. You are getting lured in by the free tier, but then this paid additional service is needed and that paid on top. Didn't work for me at all.