Agreed. If you use the extra features of amazon, like you mentioned then it can be worth the cost. I was strictly speaking on a financial basis. Hourly billing

Agreed. If you use the extra features of amazon, like you mentioned then it can be worth the cost. I was strictly speaking on a financial basis. Hourly billing only pays off if you use it to constantly scale. If you are running your servers 24/7 then chances are you are better off on dedicated for some portion of your infrastructure. * This doesnt apply for tiny sites that can get by running on a tiny linode for 20$ a month. However, once you are paying 100$/mo, every month, then this holds much more true.