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How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

blog.badsectorlabs.com

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Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#41

Post by onion2k »

fs111 wrote: post #38
onion2k wrote: post #8

Using Codenvy for development, Github for code, Netlify for deployment and hosting, and Firebase for a database, in total I spend exactly nothing on my side projects.

I just run a server on scaleway for 3€ a month and do everything there. That gives me total control over my things.

For my side projects I don't need things to be easy. I need them to be interesting, and I want them to be challenging. Deciding to do things for zero cost is an interesting constraint. I could do everything for a few dollars but I'd rather spend my time working out how to do it for free and then buy beer.

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#42

Post by icebraining »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #40
fs111 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just run a server on scaleway for 3€ a month and do everything there. That gives me total control over my things.

Scaleway are horridly unreliable. I run a SaaS business, and hosted first with DigitalOcean which amounted to roughly one outage per month. I then tried hosting with Scaleway for a few months to cut costs. On Scaleway, I averaged 53 outages every month. Average response times were slower. Longer outages meant I had to manually hard-restart the server, which corrupted all the database indexes. Scaleway also has a huge…

One outage per month in DO? Curious, we had a dozen machines running there and never experienced that. Unless they were very short-lived (we used Uptime Robot's free plan, which has a 5m interval). Or maybe it's the DC? We used AMS2.

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#43

Post by maxyme »

icebraining wrote: post #42
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scaleway are horridly unreliable. I run a SaaS business, and hosted first with DigitalOcean which amounted to roughly one outage per month. I then tried hosting with Scaleway for a few months to cut costs. On Scaleway, I averaged 53 outages every month. Average response times were slower. Longer outages meant I had to manually hard-restart the server, which corrupted all the database indexes. Scaleway also has a huge…

One outage per month in DO? Curious, we had a dozen machines running there and never experienced that. Unless they were very short-lived (we used Uptime Robot's free plan, which has a 5m interval). Or maybe it's the DC? We used AMS2.

Ditto for me. SFO2 has been extremely reliable. Every few months I'd get emails about planned router updates with the possibility of high packet loss for 10-15 mins but it never occurred.

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#44

Post by throwaway1909 »

veb wrote: post #39
nodomain wrote: post #28

I can modify the price in the checkout by changing the URL parameter. Really?

Can also use a negative price! I wonder what would happen if you went ahead with that. Presumably the payment gateway wouldn't pay me $5. Seems a strange choice to be having those parameters in a GET.

Why stop at $5? Try setting quantity or price to -9e999999999. How will you spend your $∞ dollars?

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#45

Post by fs111 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #40
fs111 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just run a server on scaleway for 3€ a month and do everything there. That gives me total control over my things.

Scaleway are horridly unreliable. I run a SaaS business, and hosted first with DigitalOcean which amounted to roughly one outage per month. I then tried hosting with Scaleway for a few months to cut costs. On Scaleway, I averaged 53 outages every month. Average response times were slower. Longer outages meant I had to manually hard-restart the server, which corrupted all the database indexes. Scaleway also has a huge…

Hmm, I run a couple of servers there including a busy tor node and I do not have any problems.

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#46

Post by BoorishBears »

lugg wrote: post #37
alex_duf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah but to each stage of a project its solution. If that works at that scale why not?

You know for people who live in an ever changing environment and are constantly editing our own reality - so much so that we need to track it in "source control" - developers are kind of funny how they get stuck on doing things "the right way."

Do they really get stuck on doing things "the right way", or do they get stuck on making off-the-cuff remarks about doing things "the right way" for easy karma?

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#47

Post by vidarh »

chmod775 wrote: post #36
phoboslab wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bandwidth at AWS costs about 50 times as much as with Hetzner for example. It's actually closer to 70x Hetzner: 1.25 USD per TB (after 30 TB free per server) [1] AWS: 90 USD per TB [2] So, 100 TB at Hetzner will cost you 125 USD (not counting the 30 TB free). You would pay 9000 USD at AWS. [1] https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Traffic/en [2] https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/

Hetzner traffic isn't even that cheap compared to some unmetered offers, for example online.net. I had to migrate away from Hetzner because I was actually paying 300 dollars on traffic alone.

The problem with some of the unmetered offers is that it's hard to know how much you'll actually be able to use, and for how long (before they oversell), so there's some appeal in paying for actual capacity. But certainly, you will pay a premium for that.

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#49

Post by vidarh »

phoboslab wrote: post #29
vidarh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the per request cost is going to be astronomical compared to what it needs to be once you e.g. get above the initial 1 GB/month tier. Bandwidth at AWS costs about 50 times as much as with Hetzner for example. > Once you hit high levels of traffic, instead of panicking and trying to add more servers and fixing DB structure, you do a cost benefit analysis and see what to do next. Either work on reducing…

> Bandwidth at AWS costs about 50 times as much as with Hetzner for example. It's actually closer to 70x Hetzner: 1.25 USD per TB (after 30 TB free per server) [1] AWS: 90 USD per TB [2] So, 100 TB at Hetzner will cost you 125 USD (not counting the 30 TB free). You would pay 9000 USD at AWS. [1] https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Traffic/en [2] https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/

Thanks for pulling the actual numbers - I was too lazy to verify, so figured it best to err on the conservative side (and also depending on how high you go, the AWS prices per TB drop quite a bit).

Re: How we built Hamiltix.net for less than $1 a month on AWS

#50

Post by auganov »

nodomain wrote: post #28

I can modify the price in the checkout by changing the URL parameter. Really?

Once upon a time, my fav food ordering place had the discount encoded in the URL. Couldn't stop myself from trying, reduced the price by a very small number and it actually worked irl!
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