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We were considering using EC2 & S3 for our upcoming launch, but we did some calculations, and found the minimum cost for 24/7 service comes to about $70 per mon

We were considering using EC2 & S3 for our upcoming launch, but we did some calculations, and found the minimum cost for 24/7 service comes to about $70 per month not including data or bandwidth charges. Once a site has greater usage and needs to scale, it seems hard to beat, but for the early days it doesn't seem to make financial sense.

davidw 19y ago
Not to mention the fact that you have to do a lot of work up front if you want to make the thing work right without taking big risks.
- edw519 19y ago
  Such as...
  - davidw 19y ago
    Basically, any storage on the machine itself could go poof from one minute to the next - or at least you have to think of it that way, because once it goes down, it's gone. Therefore, you need to have some kind of distributed storage architecture, and automated recovery for said system. For extra points, do the whole thing with no external server with a stable IP.
    - dfranke 19y ago
      > For extra points, do the whole thing with no external server with a stable IP. Should be doable. In principle, ARP over SQS.
marcus 19y ago
If you are not willing to risk 70$ per month you are in the wrong business my friend, or you are woefully too cash-strapped even the smallest bootstrap should be able to afford that. And what's the alternative going down the Twitter road? I think not... Always have a reasonable scalability plan preplanned, it doesn't have to be fully implemented but you should devote some thought cycles to the problem and have a road map for scaling.
- pius 19y ago
  Um, who are you to discourage this person because he doesn't want to blow $70 a month needlessly rather than spend $20 on a decent server slice? Not trying to troll here, but this comment makes you sound like a pompous ass who's never bootstrapped a company. Sure, it's important to have a scalability strategy planned, but that's nowhere near the same thing as wasting money on excess capacity before you need it. I suppose a few years ago you would have advised the HotOrNot guys that if they couldn't afford to maintain a standing account with Akamai before launching, they were in the wrong business too.
  - marcus 19y ago
    I wasn't trying to be condescending and I apologize if I hurt any one. I have actually bootstrapped quite a few startups (crashed and burned horribly on the first 3, only the 4th one actually made me a bit of money). And when I thought I didn't have enough money saved for what I thought I needed as bare minimum I suffered through another couple of months in my day job before taking the plunge. The entire advantage of Amazons services is that you don't need to pre-purchase too much capacity and you can scale relatively painlessly so long as you designed your server architecture for it. I admire the HotOrNot guys for their "beg, burrow, steal" approach, I wish I had even a fraction of it. And that was exactly the right thing to do back then. But now the infrastructure has improved so much that you don't need to do it for servers. Keep your energies for the other hundreds of battles you'll need to fight on your way & good luck
    - imsteve 19y ago
      Not everyone has a stable day job before they get into a startup. It's not in everyone's best interest to suffer through one for a few years first either.
downer 19y ago
I thought it was the opposite -- it's cheaper than buying your own servers and co-locating to start, but like any rental, eventually you hit the inflection point and it costs more. Also, multiply by 4 or 8 depending on what instance size you are using; so it's $72, $288, or $576 a month, per box.
- breck 19y ago
  Not if you use VDS or DS from an inexpensive host(ie GoDaddy).
  - downer 19y ago
    Those can't compete on CPU, RAM, or disk space.

davidw 19y ago

Not to mention the fact that you have to do a lot of work up front if you want to make the thing work right without taking big risks.

edw519 19y ago
Such as...
- davidw 19y ago
  Basically, any storage on the machine itself could go poof from one minute to the next - or at least you have to think of it that way, because once it goes down, it's gone. Therefore, you need to have some kind of distributed storage architecture, and automated recovery for said system. For extra points, do the whole thing with no external server with a stable IP.
  - dfranke 19y ago
    > For extra points, do the whole thing with no external server with a stable IP. Should be doable. In principle, ARP over SQS.

marcus 19y ago

If you are not willing to risk 70$ per month you are in the wrong business my friend, or you are woefully too cash-strapped even the smallest bootstrap should be able to afford that. And what's the alternative going down the Twitter road? I think not... Always have a reasonable scalability plan preplanned, it doesn't have to be fully implemented but you should devote some thought cycles to the problem and have a road map for scaling.

pius 19y ago
Um, who are you to discourage this person because he doesn't want to blow $70 a month needlessly rather than spend $20 on a decent server slice? Not trying to troll here, but this comment makes you sound like a pompous ass who's never bootstrapped a company. Sure, it's important to have a scalability strategy planned, but that's nowhere near the same thing as wasting money on excess capacity before you need it. I suppose a few years ago you would have advised the HotOrNot guys that if they couldn't afford to maintain a standing account with Akamai before launching, they were in the wrong business too.
- marcus 19y ago
  I wasn't trying to be condescending and I apologize if I hurt any one. I have actually bootstrapped quite a few startups (crashed and burned horribly on the first 3, only the 4th one actually made me a bit of money). And when I thought I didn't have enough money saved for what I thought I needed as bare minimum I suffered through another couple of months in my day job before taking the plunge. The entire advantage of Amazons services is that you don't need to pre-purchase too much capacity and you can scale relatively painlessly so long as you designed your server architecture for it. I admire the HotOrNot guys for their "beg, burrow, steal" approach, I wish I had even a fraction of it. And that was exactly the right thing to do back then. But now the infrastructure has improved so much that you don't need to do it for servers. Keep your energies for the other hundreds of battles you'll need to fight on your way & good luck
  - imsteve 19y ago
    Not everyone has a stable day job before they get into a startup. It's not in everyone's best interest to suffer through one for a few years first either.

downer 19y ago

I thought it was the opposite -- it's cheaper than buying your own servers and co-locating to start, but like any rental, eventually you hit the inflection point and it costs more. Also, multiply by 4 or 8 depending on what instance size you are using; so it's $72, $288, or $576 a month, per box.

breck 19y ago
Not if you use VDS or DS from an inexpensive host(ie GoDaddy).
- downer 19y ago
  Those can't compete on CPU, RAM, or disk space.