It irks me that every time AWS comes up people compare the pricing with simple VPS providers that only sell virtual machines and a few bells and whistles.

For starters, users that burn a lot of bandwidth probably don't do it by serving files from a VPS in a single location. In an AWS context, they may be using S3, Cloudfront and all the features and services that come with it. Setting all of that up on DIY VPS boxes (and maintaining it) may be fun for a hobby, but in business that's all costs. The cost of bandwidth is a trivial footnote.

Saying Linode's bandwidth is cheaper is like saying steak is cheaper at the butcher than it is at a restaurant.

This is an unfair comparison. Like others have mentioned in this thread they have subtle items in their terms and conditions that prevent you from actually using all that bandwidth 100% month by month. They can offer these prices by overselling their bandwidth.

You can move a lot of bandwidth for sure but as soon as you start using droplets or linodes for the sole intent of using its' included bandwidth (to self-build a CDN on it for example) you'll be shut down in no time.

If you are comparing apples with bananas you should also compare the Linode prices with Hetzner, there you get 4c/8t,32GB,30TB for under 80$.

Bandwidth on EC2 VMs is crazily expensive, especially when you add the fact that you need to use the most expensive instances to get decent speeds.

On the other hand, if you have some heavy static files to serve, the scalability of S3 is hard to beat. It can serve the files more reliably than anything you can come up with.

cloudFront has been cheaper than S3 for as long as I can recall. And it makes sense with the way amazon does cost based pricing. Its cheaper to transfer cached bits fromthe edge of the network than pull it from inside of multiple datacenters.

TANSTAAFL

Here is the relevant point in their ToS:

3.3 You shall not: (i) take any action that imposes or may impose (as determined by us in our sole discretion) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our (or our third party providers’) infrastructure;

My suspicion is they would shut you down, or encourage you to move to a larger droplet. As is referenced by glomph later in this thread, their TOU states "3.3 You shall not: (i) take any action that imposes or may impose (as determined by us in our sole discretion) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our (or our third party providers’) infrastructure;"

Consistently using excessive bandwidth likely falls in the "unreasonable or disproportionately large load " category. And, regardless, $5 for 1 Terabyte is only $0.005/gigabyte, which can only be offered, as long as people don't actually use 1 Terabyte of bandwidth The cheapest price Amazon offers (after discounts) is $0.08/gigabyte, after 150 terabytes which you've paid them $12,800 for.

In comparison, if we were to take Digital Ocean at Face Value, we could get that same 150 Terabytes for $150 * 5 or $750.

Do you truly believe that Digital Ocean is able to offer bandwidth at such a Discount to Amazon? Particularly when the price Schedule for Amazon in Singapore is graduated as follows:

   First 1 GB / month	$0.000 per GB
   Up to 10 TB / month	$0.120 per GB
   Next 40 TB / month	$0.085 per GB
   Next 100 TB / month	$0.082 per GB
   Next 350 TB / month	$0.080 per GB

You get a sense that their is a structural price floor around $0.08/GB that is hard for them to sell bandwidth for less.

The point I'm trying to make, and hopefully succeeding at, is DO and Amazon are in different business models. DO is profitable as long as the majority of their customers don't use the services intensively. Amazon, on the other hand, is profitable regardless of how much of their services you use - as a result, each of the companies incentives regarding account termination, and rate limiting, will likewise be aligned.

Please note, of course, that I'm saying this as a thoroughly satisfied Digital Ocean Customer. I've ceased using Amazon EC2 for pretty much everything, and have DO droplets all around the world. I love their service, and an am extraordinarily satisfied with both the performance and quality of their offering.

0.02 cents and $0.02 are two different things. I was confused by your reply. See [1] for a very frustrating example where Verizon reps made the same mistake.

[1] http://verizonmath.blogspot.nl/2007/08/original-recording-of...

Bullshit. If you believe they don't oversell their VPSs you are living in a fantasy land.

That is very reasonable. With DigitalOcean, All I could find was:

"Policy

Do you charge for bandwidth?

Yes. Plans start with 1TB per month and increase incrementally. Once the monthly transfer limit has been exceeded, the cost of bandwidth is $0.02 per GB over the limit."

I'm sure they have restrictions somewhere on "pooling droplets" in getting around the $0.02/per GB limit (which is already very reasonable - I wonder how they feel about customers that make a lot of use of that $0.02/GB? Amazon, even when you get to the 5 PB/month tier, still charges $.06/GB in the Singapore Region)