i have just deleted my aws (amazon web services) account. it has been costing me about 5-10€ per month for no apparent reason; its billing is about as intransparent as it could possibly be; the prices are sky-high; it just isnt even a good service.

i actually know what has been costing me these 5-10€, namely a disk image about 60GB in size. i was not told it would cost anything at all (in fact it was implied to be free), but it does anyway. i was ready to be scammed when i signed up, but this thing is surprisingly predatory even then. i signed up in order to have a build server i can access from my (not very fast) laptops, e.g. portablecompromise, but i was instead given a moneysink. it is virtually impossible for this to be worth it, even for companies and even with the flexibility it provides.

good software can fully replace the flexibility that aws provides by just not requiring many resources: there is no point. a proper VPS with 80GB of storage costs me literal 2€ a month. this is what runs my mail server. a second one runs my chatmail server. that is 4€ total for 160GB + CPU, meanwhile i paid up to 10€ (fluctuating, somehow) on AWS for 60GB and no running CPUs. it is unbelievably ridiculous, and even the prices i pay are not the cheapest you can get if youre willing to invest (which im not, so i stay with what i have). but most companies using aws could easily invest in own hardware. its a b2b scam.

it gets worse. they lock you in. its a literal cult. you cannot reasonably export an image. you also need to hire "aws experts" because the UI is so terrible. it just never stops costing you. this doesnt even just apply to businesses; actual consumers are of course even worse off since we dont have thousands to spare. the way costs work is so unpredictable you can get in debt if you merely forget to click the shutdown button. when i had an aws instance, i thus had a systemd service that would shut it down after 3 hours, which saved my ass once or twice.

did you know those 10€ were without any CPUs running. the instance was powered off. when its on for even a few hours i get an easy 20€ bill or more. this instance isnt even that powerful by the way, what the fuck.

i am glad to be gone from aws.