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Amazon flipped a default and made me thousands of dollars

expatsoftware.com

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

#21

Post by jsingleton »

nbevans wrote: post #18
jsingleton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True but if you don't have a billing account set up then SCM can be easier. I usually stick CloudFlare in front of it for availability (with multiple entries for the origin in the DNS). You can even add a page rule to cache the HTML in case the server does go down.

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

#22

Post by xenophonf »

jsingleton wrote: post #17
markwillis82 wrote: post #8

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 It may be a bit out of date by now but I could update it and write it up as a blog post if people are interested?

I'd love to read an update if you're willing to put the time into it.

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

#23

Post by jrochkind1 »

jasonkester wrote: post #19
jrochkind1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm not sure the word 'hope' means what you think it means.

Or, for that matter, that "need some help to cover our expenses" does.

But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that "we're not really making money, we just need some help to cover our expenses" is good marketing, and I guess it's not a new technique. I'll have to remember to be more skeptical.

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

#24

Post by nbevans »

jsingleton wrote: post #21
nbevans wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True but if you don't have a billing account set up then SCM can be easier. I usually stick CloudFlare in front of it for availability (with multiple entries for the origin in the DNS). You can even add a page rule to cache the HTML in case the server does go down.

Yeah I've done the Cloudflare + GitHub pattern as well for a couple things. But not everything is suited to that, nor needs that. Cloudflare also isn't going to cache large static content for very long or at all. Or just having any cache in between at all might be the wrong solution entirely. Anyway... :) S3 supports this and AzStorage doesn't - this needs fixing!

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

#27

Post by brianbreslin »

markwillis82 wrote: post #8

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

I would have liked to have seen a call to action button at each price point.

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

#28

Post by eganist »

Tangent:

> I’d much prefer to keep those minutes for things like blowing off work for the day to go rock climbing because it’s sunny and I can do that because I run my own company. The less time I have to spend dealing with these customers, the better.

This doesn't really instill confidence in the level of post-purchase support I'd get if I were to buy in. I can easily empathize with the mentality and can even appreciate it if it's intended as humor, but all I see here is "I just want you to pay me."

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

#29

Post by jasonkester »

pmontra wrote: post #26

Off topic but about that blog: please make the text darker. I had to zoom it at 1 cm per line before being able to read it comfortably (some 400 dpi screen). My tablet is laying over a magazine and I can read its darker text at less than half the size.

Excellent timing. I was getting a bit grey-texted out while proofreading it this morning, and actually made the code change on the dev side.

But the blog started seeing a dozen requests per second before I could push the change live, and I've been in "nobody touch nothin'!" mode ever since.

But I snuck that CSS change in just now.

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

#30

Post by adontz »

eganist wrote: post #28

Tangent: > I’d much prefer to keep those minutes for things like blowing off work for the day to go rock climbing because it’s sunny and I can do that because I run my own company. The less time I have to spend dealing with these customers, the better. This doesn't really instill confidence in the level of post-purchase support I'd get if I were to buy in. I can easily empathize with the mentality and can even apprec…

Not telling you are wrong, but do you really need support if product just works?
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