As stated in my other comments I'm mostly coming in from the angle of bigger deployments (3+ hosts) here. That's where EC2 starts to make sense - not always, b

As stated in my other comments I'm mostly coming in from the angle of bigger deployments (3+ hosts) here. That's where EC2 starts to make sense - not always, but often. For your site, without knowing the details, I have no doubt that you made a sound decision. You should just be open to revisit that decision once it grows to a point where a few hundred bucks difference a month don't weigh as much anymore. Or rather, where the added flexibility makes that difference worthwhile. - That's all I was trying to say.