Comment by 0cf8612b2e1e

3 years ago

And those customers can choose to ignore the emergency billing shutoff. The rest of us need assurances we do not have an unlimited liability that could strike. My potential spend is under $1k per year. Vastly different cost considerations at play.

One qeustion is whether cheap cloud services even make sense for an AWS, as opposed to a Dreamhost (targetting smaller businesses/individuals specifically) or Hetzner/DO.

I would imagine AWSs profit is in servicing large clients using lots of CPU/bandwidth, so the only reason to even bother with small clients is some kind of low-probability funnel for the occasional startup that blows up. Or just a loss-leader strategy for market domination (but only if that small-biz experience is vastly superior to other clouds' offering).

One way or another, small businesses should never trust that big businesses are going to look out for them, for any number of "rational" reasons on the big biz side, especially if it's not clear you're their bread-and-butter.