I feel like this is a myth that just won't go away. If you run your 24/7 steady state load using on-demand hourly charged instances, and don't factor in the co

I feel like this is a myth that just won't go away. If you run your 24/7 steady state load using on-demand hourly charged instances, and don't factor in the cost of managing your own hardware and data centres then yes, EC2 is hideously expensive. If you plan your spend (much like you would in buying your own hardware and DC space) it really isn't - reserved instances considerably reduce prices, and come with bulk discounts when you buy enough of them. It's been a while, but when costing out our migration to EC2 it came out cheaper than any other VM provider, and was in the same ballpark as leasing our own hardware.