Why I’m breaking up with Amazon Web Services
And setting sail on the Digital Ocean
I build apps for a living.
Some of the first ones I built, if I’m being honest, were pretty awful. But I’ve gotten better over the years, and hopefully the one I’m building now will be my best yet.
Now just to be clear…when I say that I “build” apps, I’m using that term kind of loosely. It’s really more like I come up with some crazy idea for an app, design a user experience for it, then hire some developer friends — who are much smarter than I am — to write most of the code. So it’s really more like I “produce” apps for a living.
Since 2009, I have put most of my apps on Amazon Web Services. In fact, I was pretty much in fanboy territory when it came to AWS. I loved the prices, I loved the features, and I loved the scalability. I even signed up my company to become an AWS partner.
But then things started to change about a year ago. More and more AWS alternatives started popping up, and I started experimenting with other clouds like Rackspace and Linode.
At the same time, I started to get more frustrated with AWS. There were so many features being added, that just figuring out how to use it became increasingly difficult. So much so that a new industry job role was invented—“dev ops”—which to me would be more accurately described as “someone who actually knows how to use all the shit on AWS.”
I also realized that — far from the generally accepted wisdom that “AWS is really cheap” — I found it to actually be quite expensive.
For example, I was spending about $3,000 per month on AWS for one of my apps. Then I thought, “damn that’s a lot of money.” Brilliant insight, I know.
So I started tinkering with my set up. I moved my storage from AWS S3 to Glacier, moved my servers from AWS EC2 to Linode, and got my monthly spend down to about $300 per month. So by moving most of my stuff off of AWS, I was able to reduce my cloud costs by 90%.
And that was a real eye opener when it came to the economics of cloud computing.
Now fast forward to about a month ago. My son Dylan’s 10th birthday was coming up, and I had promised to build him a Minecraft server that he could play on with his friends. I didn’t want to run the server from my house, so I decided to get a server in the cloud. Since the server was for personal use, I wanted it to be as cheap as possible. So I checked the latest cloud prices, and saw that the cheapest cloud server available was from a company called Digital Ocean.
I’d heard of Digital Ocean before, and how they were offering SSD servers for crazy-cheap prices (e.g. $5 per month). But I never gave it much thought, as I thought they must be pretty lousy servers for that kind of price. But just for giggles, I decided to spin up a server on Digital Ocean, to see how the experience compared to using AWS.
And I couldn’t have been more surprised with the results.
First of all, it was sooo much easier (and more fun) than using AWS. The analogy I would use is buying a domain name from GoDaddy (horrible design, way too complex, hard to get just what you need) versus Hover (really simple and easy to use).
It took me all of about 5 minutes to set up an account on Digital Ocean, spin up a linux server, and get it online. The user experience was fantastic, and it reminded me of how much I used to love AWS before it became so…complicated.
So I built the Minecraft server for Dylan. In fact, it was so easy to do, that I actually taught Dylan how to build his own server using Digital Ocean. That’s right, it was so easy that my 10 year old son could do it! Then Dylan made a little video showing how to do it, and posted it on Youtube so other kids could do it too.
At that point, my inner geek was turned up to 11, so I couldn’t help but sending out a tweet saying that Digital Ocean totally rocks, and adding a link to the video.
And within a few minutes, I got a couple tweets back from the guys at DO. The first one congratulated Dylan and told him to keep up the great work. Then we got this one:
I replied that Dylan and I would love to come in, and I got this tweet from Ben, the CEO of Digital Ocean:
So we went in for the visit last week. Here’s a picture of Dylan and Ben…just look at how happy my son is!
Dylan and I had an absolute blast together, and we even grabbed some ice cream afterwards.
And the next day, it hit me.
I’d fallen out of love with AWS.
But the guys at Digital Ocean helped me fall in love with the cloud all over again. They are genuine techies, real entrepreneurs, and the love and passion that they pour into their product is the real deal.
Having gone through this experience, there’s one thing I can say for sure:
I’ll be moving all of my apps from AWS to Digital Ocean in the next month or two.
