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A comment on Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS. Parent comment

Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by akerl_ on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @12:06PM (#13072431)
I don't think that actually holds up. There are certainly some people that want "ironclad guarantees", but the reality of cost here is pretty close: you pay $5/mo max for the server. The things that can cost more are either overages on bandwidth/dns (and here, 1TB of bandwidth on the low end is included, eliminating a lot of the flux from EC2), or things you choose to initiate, like snapshots.

It feels like the larger thing they're trying to solve, that I expect actually stops the majority of people who don't choose AWS, is the complexity around setting up VPCs/SecurityGroups/Subnets/etc.

Most providers in the VPS space already charge overages for bandwidth, and most of them don't support suspending the account vs just billing you.

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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by ffk on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @12:17PM (#13072552)
I personally don't use AWS for personal projects because of the lack of a cap. I would rather see my system suspended rather than continue to pay beyond my budget.
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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by JustSomeNobody on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @12:21PM (#13072597)
This. I got excited about this until I came to HN and started reading the comments. I _have_ to have a cap. I don't want to do something stupid that puts me on the hook for $$$.
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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by MustardTiger on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @06:25PM (#13075635)
So who are you using then? I don't see anyone that has a cap. Everyone charges you if you go over your allotted bandwidth.
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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by ffk on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @06:38PM (#13075718)
Not sure if this is still the case. Digital ocean had a pricing structure for bandwidth, but was not charging for that used bandwidth because they did not have a way to show how much bandwidth has been used in a billing cycle. Best to ask them if this is still the case.
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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by radva42 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @02:08PM (#13073643)
I agree.

I am currently using Linode, but would move to AWS if they offer a cap. 2 years ago I signed up for the free AWS and forgot about it (didn't use it at all). Ended up costing ~60$ before I found out and since then I've avoided it.

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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by akerl_ on Thursday December 01, 2016 @03:31AM (#13078054)
Linode has bandwidth overages, just like LightSail, so I don't see how this compares. You pay more money if your Linode surpasses the quota.
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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by ryanSrich on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @01:25PM (#13073232)
Exactly. I have alerting setup on DO that notifies if I need to address scaling issues. Let me make the decision for smaller projects. 100%.
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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by TheDong on Thursday December 01, 2016 @02:25AM (#13077824)
AWS's pricing and usage related billing is orders of magnitude better than DO.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2...

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Re:Amazon LightSail: Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS by ghaff on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @12:58PM (#13072954)
Exactly. There's certainly a market for VPSs and other cloud services that have a hard cost cap. AWS has apparently decided that they're fine with not competing for that slice of the business.

Setting cost caps on more complex applications that use a lot of different AWS services would get complex in a hurry and could easily have unintended effects.

As someone else wrote, I view this as primarily a simple VPS for people who are already using AWS for other things. I suspect that AWS isn't really interested in being a VPS-only provider for the most price-sensitive customers.

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