Amazon’s announcement of Micro Instances this week ist great news for web sites who need a lower-capacity intense type for simple operations or low-volume processes. Some people have equated Micro Instances with a VPS model, or specifically as competition to traditional mass market web hosts.
A small instances is not an offering that replaces a web host.
Is there pushbutton deployment of WordPress or Drupal? No.
Can you provision a FREE MySQL database as part of the service? No.
Is there an easy to use cpanel-like front end? No. Do they have reseller accounts? No.
Do they offer built-in POP, SMTP, mailboxes, FTP and other standard web host services? No.
You have to install all of that software manually, configure it, and make sure it stays running. Godaddy does this for you, for $4.95/month.
It’s nice they have a cheaper option, but this doesn’t change Amazon’s fundamental service one iota.
John Treadway 
Just to add a perspective from another IaaS vendor. Amazon’s strategy is clear, to gradually release additional server instance sizes over time each accompanied by a marketing fan fair. This masks the fundamental truth; that server instance sizes of pre-bundled resources are actually an entirely false construct. What Amazon and other vendors are doing is bundling resources together allowing them to divide up physical servers more efficiently and to over allocate certain resources to boost margins. Storage is a good example of this at Amazon (they bundle way too much storage with their instance sizes making it look like a better deal).nnThe truth is that server instance sizes are in fact an entirely commercial construct in the cloud and don’t exist in the technology underlying these systems. There is no reason why Amazon (and others) could not offer completely flexible individually definable resource sizes for their cloud servers with simple minimum and maximum sizes per resource only.nnAs of today, our company for example has a wider range of minimum and maximum sizes for CPU, RAM and storage and each are individually definable. That means you can have any combination of resources on your server and vary that over time. That means eliminating waste and tuning in your servers to meet your needs. That’s utility computing. Until customers realise and demand this flexibility, larger vendors will continue to limit their user’s freedom.nnKind regards,nnRobertnn– nRobert JenkinsnCo-foundernCloudSigmanhttp://www.cloudsigma.com
This is so true but for companies that need some small tasks done you cannot beat the price. But if you need a basic host GoDaddy is perfect all in one solution. I have multiple servers with them and even save money with my own coupon codes that save me even more money.
I think Amazon is going after rackspace and joyent with micro instances rather than godaddy. I don’t think domains and email services are on amazon radar at the moment. Amazon are gradually increasing there footprint at the high end and low end for server instances. I am sure you will see the services follow. Relational Data Service, their MySQL service, will surely be available over these instances. We will also definitely see new services in the future like a java service (based on Tomcat?) and maybe php and ruby services over apache? Amazon AWS is apparently growing at 10% a month and has 70% of the infrastructure cloud computing market. I am sure they plan to keep up the momentum.nnNeill Turnernnhttp://www.elastdream.comn
William Toll at NaviSite sent me a link to SiteCloud’s VPS running on EC2. Good model – a totally infrastructure-free hosting business. Of course, making money on this will be hard in the long run… http://www.sitecloud.com/cloud-hosting/vps-cloud-hosting.php
You make a good point. There’s no reason why an EC2 small has to have 3.7GB of RAM. Their billing system is set up to have fixed pricing tiers and that’s all.
I don’t think that SiteCloud is using Amazon’s EC2 infrastructure no more on the account that the network throughput between their nodes was dismall, forcing them to build their own cloud… which they claim has made their service much more faster, customers also agree based on twitter.
good articlenkeep up with good work
I like Godaddy for domain names but when it comes to hosting, let’s face it, they are crap. Hundreds of other better options available…
As a technical user, I find the push button approach too limiting. I would much rather have root access to the server and custom configure it to my needs. Amazon EC2 was designed for enterprise users, not residential customers.
Micro Instances is web hosting service provider. It give many offers and plans for web hosting service and its all different parts like SQL database, its space etc. This is really great information.