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Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

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Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#11
post #6

EDIT: Well that will teach me to read more closely! Continue below if you want to see me make an idiot of myself. Turns out I missed the point So as I type this the votes are charging up the ranks (about 10 votes since I started typing this comment), so let me start off: I can't possibly see how this is Amazon's fault. You're arguing that you offer a service for free (for a little while anyway), and that more people…

Although I mostly skimmed the article, I have to say that the feeling I got from the article changed a couple of times between positive v. negative. This left me confused and because of that I guess I missed the point as well.

For me, the words "amazon made me thousands of dollars" in the title rather set the tone.

Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#12

As a recently new customer to AWS. This service sounds really useful. Quite possibly one of the best pricing pages[1] I've seen in a while too. [1] https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx

It's a hilarious page, but I wouldn't call it "informatively" good, you can't easily eyeball the difference between the plans in the way the good ol' pricing grid would show.

Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#13

As a recently new customer to AWS. This service sounds really useful. Quite possibly one of the best pricing pages[1] I've seen in a while too. [1] https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx

> We were initially hoping to provide this service free of charge.

Huh, the blog post doesn't make it seem like he was 'initially hoping' to do that at all.

I guess it's good marketing to make it seem like you just "need some help to cover our expenses," and aren't actually making a profit?

Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#14
post #7

Such a shame that Azure Blob Storage doesn't support "default pages" i.e. index.html Then it could be used for static web site hosting just like S3 :( See also: https://feedback.azure.com/forums/217298-storage/suggestions...

Wouldn't it be easier to use GitHub or GitLab pages for a static site?

Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#16

As a recently new customer to AWS. This service sounds really useful. Quite possibly one of the best pricing pages[1] I've seen in a while too. [1] https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx

It's a hilarious page, but I wouldn't call it "informatively" good, you can't easily eyeball the difference between the plans in the way the good ol' pricing grid would show.

There's a pretty 3-column pricing grid sitting unused on the server, after a day of painstaking pixel nudging then 30 days of pummeling in an A/B test against that ugly wall of text you see today.

I'm as surprised as you. But I'm not arguing against math.

Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#17

As a recently new customer to AWS. This service sounds really useful. Quite possibly one of the best pricing pages[1] I've seen in a while too. [1] https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx

AWS pricing is crazy complicated. I gave a presentation on this a few years ago (https://speakerdeck.com/jpsingleton/aws-pricing). It may be a bit out of date by now but I could update it and write it up as a blog post if people are interested?

Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#18
post #7

Such a shame that Azure Blob Storage doesn't support "default pages" i.e. index.html Then it could be used for static web site hosting just like S3 :( See also: https://feedback.azure.com/forums/217298-storage/suggestions...

Wouldn't it be easier to use GitHub or GitLab pages for a static site?

Depends on the scenario really. If you want it version controlled, yeah sure. But there are other use cases that don't need that. You just want a "publishing target" that is low cost and minimal complexity. Plus GitHub/GitLab don't have the same number of availability-9's that Azure Blob Storage or AWS S3 can have.

Re: Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

#19

As a recently new customer to AWS. This service sounds really useful. Quite possibly one of the best pricing pages[1] I've seen in a while too. [1] https://www.s3stat.com/Pricing.aspx

> We were initially hoping to provide this service free of charge. Huh, the blog post doesn't make it seem like he was 'initially hoping' to do that at all. I guess it's good marketing to make it seem like you just "need some help to cover our expenses," and aren't actually making a profit?

That hope did indeed exist, but it faded after a month or two when the first big accounts started to sign up. If you dig around enough you can find a version of that silly pricetag graphic on the server from when I hoped to cover those server expenses for $1/month.

But you're right. Sense prevailed, and I eventually started charging money in exchange for goods and services.

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