You’re saying a single company can buy and maintain a server infrastructure cheaper than rates like .0001 cent per request? Yeah I don’t quite believe that. An entire industry moved to using AWS because it was cheaper.
AWS sucks for several reasons but let’s not pretend it’s more expensive than self hosting
I have not seen that claim until now. I always have been told the entire existence of AWS is because it’s way cheaper than self hosting and that makes sense to me
In SOME cases, it is cheaper than on prem.
If you need a lot of compute power occasionally, it can be cheaper.
If you actually scale up and down according to the load (which a lot of companies do not do), it might be cheaper.
But a large amount of companies don’t fall in those cases or don’t do it efficiently.
Some spend in a year the same amount they would have paid for on prem servers they would have kept 5 years or more.
Cloud providers offer other things like multi regional redundancy, which can be hard to achieve for smaller businesses.
It’s never been cheaper. It’s so much easier to scale. It’s never been cheaper. Well, maybe at a very low usage rate. But, at scale, it’s never been cheaper.
Buying server hardware is a lot more difficult and with more lead time than just buying a computer. Plus you then have to build your server infrastructure out in a data center. It takes a lot of time, and specific logistical skills. AWS is far easier to scale your services then doing it yourself, especially if you have extremely high peaks that you have to serve.
If AWS was cheaper then hosting, they wouldn’t make money.
it completely depends on your use case. like, 100% of the time it depends on your use case. AWS can be cheaper, but it can also be orders of magnitude more expensive. That’s how AWS makes so much fucking money. Because once it’s orders of magnitude more expensive it’s very hard to move off of it. I ran a software stack at my last company completely on AWS Lambda. It was cheaper than if we hosted it ourselves, but not because the infrastructure was cheaper. No, it was more expensive, but because we had to do less maintenance and upkeep. Deploys were easier, rollbacks were easier, etc. If we didn’t care about maintenance, we weren’t deploying numerous times a day, and if our services were used 24/7 rather than only in the middle of the work day, then it would have been much cheaper to host it ourselves on a box in an office.
its cost more money upfront, since companies need to invest money to build their servers/server racks. You can also still rent space in a data-center, without the need of building your own data center.
But on the long run, it can be much cheaper than constantly renting all the hardware. You can compare it to houses, buying a house costs more money then renting. But overall in the long run, you are normally better off buying a property (assuming you can of course… its just an example).
Their servers are slow, I have seen that myself, but I don’t see how it wouldn’t be cheaper to use AWS other than maybe some highly specific scenarios.
There are some very few specific use case that most companies don’t ever meet that makes AWS cheaper. In the vast majority of use cases it is an order of magnitude more expensive.
The article says; if they self host it will cost them billions of dollars.
But I don’t believe that at all. In fact, self hosting can be much cheaper on the long run.
This is the reason Bluesky apparently can scale so well, they use their own infra. Hack, I’m now sending this message from my own infra
You’re saying a single company can buy and maintain a server infrastructure cheaper than rates like .0001 cent per request? Yeah I don’t quite believe that. An entire industry moved to using AWS because it was cheaper.
AWS sucks for several reasons but let’s not pretend it’s more expensive than self hosting
Have you not been seeing it is in some cases. And companies are going back to on orem because it’s cheaper.
I have not seen that claim until now. I always have been told the entire existence of AWS is because it’s way cheaper than self hosting and that makes sense to me
In SOME cases, it is cheaper than on prem. If you need a lot of compute power occasionally, it can be cheaper. If you actually scale up and down according to the load (which a lot of companies do not do), it might be cheaper. But a large amount of companies don’t fall in those cases or don’t do it efficiently. Some spend in a year the same amount they would have paid for on prem servers they would have kept 5 years or more.
Cloud providers offer other things like multi regional redundancy, which can be hard to achieve for smaller businesses.
Thank you for the thoughtful response and not just downvoting like most others!
It’s never been cheaper. It’s so much easier to scale. It’s never been cheaper. Well, maybe at a very low usage rate. But, at scale, it’s never been cheaper.
Buying server hardware is a lot more difficult and with more lead time than just buying a computer. Plus you then have to build your server infrastructure out in a data center. It takes a lot of time, and specific logistical skills. AWS is far easier to scale your services then doing it yourself, especially if you have extremely high peaks that you have to serve.
If AWS was cheaper then hosting, they wouldn’t make money.
it completely depends on your use case. like, 100% of the time it depends on your use case. AWS can be cheaper, but it can also be orders of magnitude more expensive. That’s how AWS makes so much fucking money. Because once it’s orders of magnitude more expensive it’s very hard to move off of it. I ran a software stack at my last company completely on AWS Lambda. It was cheaper than if we hosted it ourselves, but not because the infrastructure was cheaper. No, it was more expensive, but because we had to do less maintenance and upkeep. Deploys were easier, rollbacks were easier, etc. If we didn’t care about maintenance, we weren’t deploying numerous times a day, and if our services were used 24/7 rather than only in the middle of the work day, then it would have been much cheaper to host it ourselves on a box in an office.
is this really true tho? i mean just recently i saw someone say that hosting on bare metal for example gave them like a 2 or 3 times more performance
so i wonder if, exspecially for bigger companies, if this is really cheaper at all. It sounds less efficient
its cost more money upfront, since companies need to invest money to build their servers/server racks. You can also still rent space in a data-center, without the need of building your own data center.
But on the long run, it can be much cheaper than constantly renting all the hardware. You can compare it to houses, buying a house costs more money then renting. But overall in the long run, you are normally better off buying a property (assuming you can of course… its just an example).
Their servers are slow, I have seen that myself, but I don’t see how it wouldn’t be cheaper to use AWS other than maybe some highly specific scenarios.
You have it backwards.
There are some very few specific use case that most companies don’t ever meet that makes AWS cheaper. In the vast majority of use cases it is an order of magnitude more expensive.