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Godaddy Virtual Dedicated Server vs. Amazon EC2 vs. Rackspace Mosso, which is better for a startup and why?
I am looking into both of these companies services. I currently use Godaddy, yet I'm considering switching to Amazon EC2/S3 or RackSpace Mosso Cloud Computing. What's the difference, and why is one better than the other. Compare Price and Product Quality. Does anyone have a comparison of these services? Can you provide information on them?
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You choice of web host depends on how demanding your web application is, and how much traffic you expect.
"Shared Hosting" - which is what you are getting via GoDaddy, is the lowest level of service. This can be very economical for small web sites (those with under 1,000 visits per day). There are many providers including DreamHost, and other smaller companies. Make your decision based on cost, reliability, and support of the application platform you want to use [expect under $10/month].
"Virtual Private Hosting" - This next level of service, provided by RackSpace, Slicehost, SoftLayer, and others, guarantees you a higher level of service, bandwidth, and control of your server environment. If you need to install custom applications, and directly control your operating system configuration, you'll want at least this level of service. This is a good solution for web sites under 10,000 visits per day and configurations where multiple servers are needed; expect to pay in the $40/mo range per server.
"Dedicated Hosting" - gives you exclusive use to your own server. Most hosts have a manual provisioning process that can take 24 hours to setup your hardware. But then you have complete control and exclusive use of that resource. Depending on your application complexity, you can serve up to 100,000's of daily visitors from a single server. More complex applications may require multiple front-end web servers, and one or more back-end database servers. Expect to pay $50-$100/mo per CPU, plus bandwidth charges.
Amazon EC2 gives you a dedicated machine, but offers the flexibility to provision one of more machines very rapidly (and even go up and down as demand changes). Pricing starts at about $80/mo per CPU. If you need the flexibility to scale your application as demand grows, EC2 is a great choice. You will likely find less expensive hosting dedicated hosting options, but with much slower turn around time on changing your configurations or adding machines.
Startups should also be looking at Google's AppEngine service. While not a generalized hosting model, AppEngine provides a different level of Cloud Computing that scales automatically when your demand goes up. Applications have to be written specifically for AppEngine (in the Python programming language, today), but the popular Django framework is supported.
AppEngine is in beta, but is FREE for web sites up to about 5 million monthly page views; so it's an excellent way for a startup to get their site up and running, and still have the potential to scale to very large numbers of visitors (pricing will be about $50/mo for each 5 million additional monthly views).
"Shared Hosting" - which is what you are getting via GoDaddy, is the lowest level of service. This can be very economical for small web sites (those with under 1,000 visits per day). There are many providers including DreamHost, and other smaller companies. Make your decision based on cost, reliability, and support of the application platform you want to use [expect under $10/month].
"Virtual Private Hosting" - This next level of service, provided by RackSpace, Slicehost, SoftLayer, and others, guarantees you a higher level of service, bandwidth, and control of your server environment. If you need to install custom applications, and directly control your operating system configuration, you'll want at least this level of service. This is a good solution for web sites under 10,000 visits per day and configurations where multiple servers are needed; expect to pay in the $40/mo range per server.
"Dedicated Hosting" - gives you exclusive use to your own server. Most hosts have a manual provisioning process that can take 24 hours to setup your hardware. But then you have complete control and exclusive use of that resource. Depending on your application complexity, you can serve up to 100,000's of daily visitors from a single server. More complex applications may require multiple front-end web servers, and one or more back-end database servers. Expect to pay $50-$100/mo per CPU, plus bandwidth charges.
Amazon EC2 gives you a dedicated machine, but offers the flexibility to provision one of more machines very rapidly (and even go up and down as demand changes). Pricing starts at about $80/mo per CPU. If you need the flexibility to scale your application as demand grows, EC2 is a great choice. You will likely find less expensive hosting dedicated hosting options, but with much slower turn around time on changing your configurations or adding machines.
Startups should also be looking at Google's AppEngine service. While not a generalized hosting model, AppEngine provides a different level of Cloud Computing that scales automatically when your demand goes up. Applications have to be written specifically for AppEngine (in the Python programming language, today), but the popular Django framework is supported.
AppEngine is in beta, but is FREE for web sites up to about 5 million monthly page views; so it's an excellent way for a startup to get their site up and running, and still have the potential to scale to very large numbers of visitors (pricing will be about $50/mo for each 5 million additional monthly views).
source(s):
List of hosting providers I've collected - http://faves.com/users/mike/tag/hosting
AppEngine Pricing Proposal - http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20080527_google_io.html
List of hosting providers I've collected - http://faves.com/users/mike/tag/hosting
AppEngine Pricing Proposal - http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20080527_google_io.html
| Asker's rating: |
It was tough to pick an answer, but this one had some interesting thoughts.
Well thought out answer, and lots of hosting providers. Google App Engine was one I did not mention, yet it's also another one.
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I trust GoDaddy as far as I can throw them, even if I am grateful from all of my former customers that got tired of being treated like crap by them.
EC2 is being used by Mahalo Answers, so it obviously works. It could be expensive but you will need to run your own numbers before you can judge.
I haven't tried Rackspace Mosso myself, but so far none of my customers or peers ever complains about Rackspace, and they are a vocal bunch so I would expect them to start whining over the most trivial thing. I also don't know if Rackspace's cloud is like Amazon's or more like Google's.
EC2 is being used by Mahalo Answers, so it obviously works. It could be expensive but you will need to run your own numbers before you can judge.
I haven't tried Rackspace Mosso myself, but so far none of my customers or peers ever complains about Rackspace, and they are a vocal bunch so I would expect them to start whining over the most trivial thing. I also don't know if Rackspace's cloud is like Amazon's or more like Google's.
Did not know that Mahalo Answers is using EC2, and that certainly is encouraging.
According to Jason, "We prototyped it on EC2 but the costs were too high compared to renting a dozen servers." Therefore, Mahalo Answers is no longer using EC2.
Over the last 2 years we (SimulScribe/PhoeTag) have spent a lot of time looking at the various cloud solutions that have come out.
Amazon's EC2 is by far and away the best solution to run your technology platform on. They have maintained a clear leadership position in price, flexibility, up-time (I am sure a lot of people will dispute this but overall they have outstanding up-time) performance, etc.
As a fellow entrepreneur who has spent way too much time analyzing this space I would say with 100% confidence that if you are a start up build everything on EC2 and use the time/money you save to focus on your business and market. To put my money where my mouth is I am proud to say that SimulScribe/PhoneTag runs 100% of its technology/platform using EC2.
Amazon's EC2 is by far and away the best solution to run your technology platform on. They have maintained a clear leadership position in price, flexibility, up-time (I am sure a lot of people will dispute this but overall they have outstanding up-time) performance, etc.
As a fellow entrepreneur who has spent way too much time analyzing this space I would say with 100% confidence that if you are a start up build everything on EC2 and use the time/money you save to focus on your business and market. To put my money where my mouth is I am proud to say that SimulScribe/PhoneTag runs 100% of its technology/platform using EC2.
If you really expect your start up to blow up with a lot of traffic, then go with EC2 or Mosso if you can afford them. Give Mosso a chance, they may be less expensive than EC2.
The reason you would pick Mosso or EC2 over a regular dedicated virtual server is because (although there will be some extra coding involved up front) EC2 and Mosso will allow you to rapidly scale your site (basically a few clicks I think for EC2) if it suddenly gets massive increases in traffic. You are going to pay more for that type of capability.
Just know that your software developer will need to know ahead of time so that he can write your application with whatever platform you choose ahead of time. Actually, I would go over the options with your developer(s) before making the decision.
The reason you would pick Mosso or EC2 over a regular dedicated virtual server is because (although there will be some extra coding involved up front) EC2 and Mosso will allow you to rapidly scale your site (basically a few clicks I think for EC2) if it suddenly gets massive increases in traffic. You are going to pay more for that type of capability.
Just know that your software developer will need to know ahead of time so that he can write your application with whatever platform you choose ahead of time. Actually, I would go over the options with your developer(s) before making the decision.
A few points here (sort of a refute but this is a complex area so I would rather call it a comment):
-A single small instance on EC2 will run you $.10 per hour. So if you have very little traffic, your monthly cost will be $73 add a slight amount for bandwidth and other services (again you are assuming that things have not taken off yet) and you are less then $80 per month. While go daddy might be a little cheaper the flexibility that you gain with EC2 is worth the extra few $'s from my ROI calculations.
-When you write your code to EC2 there is actually very little specialization to EC2. All of our code is in Ruby and could instantly be put on servers. In fact we ran for a very long time where the primary apps were in EC2 and the back ups were physical servers, same code. This is not true for Google and I can check about the others but I believe that last I check they do require special code.
-Scalability is incredible on EC2 which allows you to focus on your business as things grow. This is something that ilaksh and I agree on.
-A single small instance on EC2 will run you $.10 per hour. So if you have very little traffic, your monthly cost will be $73 add a slight amount for bandwidth and other services (again you are assuming that things have not taken off yet) and you are less then $80 per month. While go daddy might be a little cheaper the flexibility that you gain with EC2 is worth the extra few $'s from my ROI calculations.
-When you write your code to EC2 there is actually very little specialization to EC2. All of our code is in Ruby and could instantly be put on servers. In fact we ran for a very long time where the primary apps were in EC2 and the back ups were physical servers, same code. This is not true for Google and I can check about the others but I believe that last I check they do require special code.
-Scalability is incredible on EC2 which allows you to focus on your business as things grow. This is something that ilaksh and I agree on.
OK I overstated that saying "can write your application with whatever platform you choose".. not even really a platform.. but they do need to know ahead of time because otherwise they might put a whole bunch of effort into some details of "how do I scale this" and those might not be compatible with Mosso or they might not be necessary with EC2.
The ROI depends. If he has $10 million that is one thing and I would say no question go for Mosso or EC2 over a regular dedicated virtual where you would have to manually deploy instances. But people mean a lot of different things when they say startup. If he has $5,000 and ends up getting a total of 2,000 users with about 120 online at the same time at max load, that is going to be a different ROI calculation.
The ROI depends. If he has $10 million that is one thing and I would say no question go for Mosso or EC2 over a regular dedicated virtual where you would have to manually deploy instances. But people mean a lot of different things when they say startup. If he has $5,000 and ends up getting a total of 2,000 users with about 120 online at the same time at max load, that is going to be a different ROI calculation.
And one more thing, I like the AppEngine idea more than anything else really, if it will work for you and your developer(s) agree.
Fair enough on the ROI. In my ROI calculation I am always thinking that employees time is always the most expensive resource. If you are on a shoe string budget typically you are very light on tech support, to me that is where you really make up the cost in going with EC2. However ilaksh has a point, if you are the programmer, so your time is cheaper then cash, then the cheapest option would probably be the best.
One thing that I see a lot of startups underestimate is the need to focus on the business and having technology hurdles takes away from that focus usually allowing another competitor to come in and pass bye you...
One thing that I see a lot of startups underestimate is the need to focus on the business and having technology hurdles takes away from that focus usually allowing another competitor to come in and pass bye you...
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