After years of dominating the hosting industry with their cloud hosting services, Amazon and other large hosting companies are losing their grasp on businesses.
Here are the 3 major reasons businesses are leaving AWS and other large hosting companies, and where they’re headed now:
1. AWS Requires Proprietary Knowledge
Businesses that wish to use AWS must have their developers learn architecting, developing, and operations from the ground up. In fact, the knowledge required to use AWS has led Amazon to create 6 different certifications in 3 different categories for its web hosting services.
These certifications aren’t free either! The associate certification has a $150 registration fee while the professional exam’s fee is $300. In addition to exam fees, you’ll need to pay around $25/mo per developer/system admin to train them for their certifications and keep them up to date afterward. There are also the AWS Global Summits, which while free, still involves the cost of travel, hotel, and food. The summits are highly recommended for AWS users as they educate customers on technical changes and aid in companies being more successful with AWS.
Assuming 6 months of training are needed, a practice exam is taken, and the developer is attaining the professional certification, you could be looking at a cost of $475 per developer just to ensure you and/or your developers have the knowledge necessary to use the platform!
No other hosting solution has ever required users to learn proprietary knowledge.
Why do you think Amazon does this?
It’s simple. To lock users into using AWS for the foreseeable future. If you’ve already invested the time and money to train your developers to use AWS you don’t want to throw that away to switch to another platform.
It also incentivizes developers to push their CEOs to use AWS over other hosting options. This is because developers with certifications and experience using AWS will have more job opportunities and can be paid higher than those without AWS experience. Just how much higher has AWS certified developers paid? Here’s a recent look at average salaries:
- The AWS Certified Developer — Associate Level $137,825
- An AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Professional Level $117,434
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate Level $114,935
- The AWS Certified SysOps Administrator — Associate Level $108,046
2. Contrary to Popular Belief, AWS Is Substantially More Expensive Than Other Hosting Options
By touting no long-term contracts, a pay as you go approach, and pricing that involves “only paying for what you needâ€, Amazon has fooled several businesses into thinking it’s one of the cheaper hosting options. However, as you take a closer look (and even receive your first bill) you’ll quickly realize it’s quite the opposite.
Amazon Web Services can be more than double the price of a comparable dedicated server. Check for yourself by using the AWS cost calculator and comparing it to our dedicated server pricing.
Make sure to include the traffic and storage in the price, and you’ll be astonished at the total. Take, for example, our Power Dedicated Server Package which offers 4 cores, 16GBs of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive, and 20TB traffic. This server would cost just $119.95 a month (although there is a great sale going on right now that gets you a lifetime price of $99.95)
If you put together a similar offering on AWS, with 4 cores, 16GBs of RAM, a 500GB Drive, and 20TB traffic, your AWS monthly bill would be $2,134.85.
The majority of that price comes from traffic. Even if we lower that to 1TB, you’ll still get hit with a monthly bill of $240.93. Nearly two and a half times as expensive as ServerPronto offers.
3) You Don’t Actually Have Control
One of the most important things to consider when choosing a server host is the amount of control you have over the setup. Dedicated server hosts will often provide full root access giving you much needed control over your server. This allows you to setup your server to your exact specifications. It is also important for ensuring your server is as secure as possible.
Where Are Businesses Going next for Hosting?
You can probably already guess by now, but businesses are leaving AWS and other large hosting providers for smaller hosts who can provide more powerful and more affordable packages. Some businesses are switching to private clouds, others to dedicated server setups and hybrid setups.
The benefits of switching to a smaller hosting provider are numerous:
- It’s significantly more affordable
- You’ll receive a more powerful setup with fewer limitations
- You have full control over your server/hosting
- You/your developers won’t need to learn proprietary knowledge to run and manage your server
- You’ll receive better customer support
While hybrid cloud and private cloud options are possibilities, many businesses will find that switching to an affordable dedicated server makes more sense. Dedicated Servers still offer better performance across the board when compared to cloud hosting. One area where the difference really stands out is disk IO (Input/Output) speeds. Dedicated servers have both faster and more plentiful storage options than their cloud counterparts.
Dedicated servers offer more transparency when something goes wrong, allowing you or your team the ability to identify a bug. Lastly, dedicated servers offer incredible redundancy that rivals and in some cases even surpasses cloud hosting. Just take a look at this case of a dedicated server running for 24 years without any unplanned downtime! Cloud hosting isn’t 100% hardware free and has physical elements such as nodes which can be even more fragile than dedicated server hardware.
Tired of being held captive by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or another hosting provider? Learn how a smaller provider can help you now.
ServerPronto offers the best affordable and secure hosting service in all dedicated server packages.
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