We often field questions about the differences between our Everleap Managed Hosting service and Public Cloud platforms. To address this topic, we previously published an article about the differences between Everleap Managed Hosting and Azure.
In this post, we will examine differences between Everleap Managed Hosting and Amazon AWS.
| A Brief History of Amazon AWS Dealing with the rapid growth of their ecommerce platform in the early 2000s, Amazon set out to build a scalable cloud infrastructure. Amazon also thought that other retailers may need to solve the same problem. So, Amazon decided to leverage their technology and rent out the infrastructure to other businesses. To execute on this idea, Amazon introduced Merchant.com as an ecommerce platform-as-a-service. With this platform retailers could quickly build an online shopping experience. The idea of Merchant.com seemed to be intriguing, but its actual execution turned out to be very challenging. To streamline, Amazon decoupled their system and focused on selling its components – basic compute, storage, and database as metered services. AWS (Amazon Web Services) launched Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) in 2006, providing services for storing and retrieving data. They followed up with the launch of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), allowing users to rent virtual servers to run their own applications. AWS has continued its work to expand its services to include a wide range of offerings, such as database management, machine learning, security, networking, and more. Today, AWS offers 200+ products and services. |
Amazon AWS is Powerful Yet Complex
Amazon AWS is a powerful public cloud platform built for developers. However, with 200+ services, it is so complex that even seasoned developers have difficulty navigating all the options and many offload the AWS infrastructure management to Managed AWS Service Providers or they use Amazon’s AWS Professional Services. To help users master AWS, Amazon offers training courses and certifications.
So How Does Everleap Compete with AWS?
How does Everleap compete against a behemoth like Amazon AWS that has virtually all the latest technology innovations? We know that AWS will always have a larger global footprint and a deeper technology stack than Everleap will ever have. Therefore, Everleap’s focus is not about competing with AWS on technology, a losing proposition. Instead, Everleap focuses on filling a different need in the market. We focus on delivering a high touch service to small- and medium-sized businesses, that is to simplify their hosting journey so they can have a successful presence online.
We understand that many businesses do not require deep niched technologies, and do not require hosting in global datacenters, and do not experience exponential growth. Most businesses simply desire standard hosting services that actually work reliably along with good technical support that they can rely on when needed. For example, an ecommerce site that is powered by an application like nopCommerce will require a Windows Web Server and a SQL Database. Both are standard Windows web services. We would encourage all users of nopCommerce and similar applications to explore all their hosting options to make the best decision for their online business.
Comparing Everleap and Amazon AWS
In Table 1, we list out the differences between Everleap’s Managed Hosting Solution and Amazon AWS Hosting Solutions. Please note that in the table, we will not be including a list of different technologies, since it is already established that Amazon AWS would have many technologies that Everleap would not support.
Table 1 Everleap vs. AWS
| Everleap | AWS | |
| Pre-Sales Consulting | Yes (Free) | Not with regular service. Yes, with paid AWS Professional Services. |
| Fully Managed Hosting | Yes | Not with regular service. Yes, with paid AWS Managed Services. (based on AWS fees) |
| Who is responsible for initial server setup | Everleap | Customer, or use paid AWS Professional Services staff |
| Site Migration | Yes (generally free) | Not with regular service. Yes, with paid AWS Professional Services |
| APIs for Server Management | No | Yes |
| Scalable Hosting Environment | Yes | Yes |
| Auto-Scaling | No | Yes |
| 24/7 Technical Support | Yes (Free) | No, but offers free self-support. Yes, with paid Support Plan* (Generally, 3-10% of monthly AWS fees) |
| System Admin / DBA Support | Yes, 2 hours per month included | Not with regular service, Yes, with paid AWS Professional Services |
| Monthly Uptime Percentage | 99.9% | 99.5% – 99.99%** (Depending on compute platform) |
| Billing | Billed monthly in advance | Billed monthly in arrears – or – Upfront/Partial Upfront option with 1yr or 3yr commitment |
| Fees | Flat Monthly Fees | By the hour. Partial hours billed per second for standard instances. (for compute) |
| Data Transfer Fees | No, ingress/egress bandwidth included with monthly price | Yes, egress bandwidth billed separately, other data transfer that are subject to charges include data transfer between workload and other AWS services, between AWS regions, between on-premises systems and AWS, and over AWS site-to-site VPN |
| Predictable Monthly Pricing | Yes | No |
Let’s take a deeper dive into some categories that encompass many of the items in Table 1.
Developer-Friendly Platform vs. Business-Friendly Hosting
Amazon WS is built for developers with access to deep niched technology stacks. Developers have the capability to create and control their hosting environment through the AWS portal or through versatile APIs. Amazon provides a hosting infrastructure with one of the deepest technology platforms for developers. However, having 200+ services, the hosting environment management increases in complexity and can become overwhelming even for seasoned developers.
At Everleap, we deliver a high-touch service to small- and medium-sized businesses. Everleap’s goal is to help businesses get stable hosting for their business applications, while addressing common pain points of the Public Cloud. Therefore, we include pre- and post-sales consultation, hosting environment setup, site migration services, technical support, and server management as part of our Managed Hosting services. We help design an optimized hosting infrastructure for our client’s requirements. Our philosophy is always to offer right-sized hosting environments that are not under- or over-resourced.
Everleap services are also fully managed, which means that we take care of all server updates and security patches. Amazon AWS deployments are managed by the customer. The AWS customer can outsource the server management to AWS Managed Services or to a Managed AWS Service Provider, which is an added hosting expense.
Support
With Amazon AWS services, customers can access free self-help resources in the form of documentation, whitepapers, knowledge center, videos, blog posts and articles. To receive higher level of support, AWS offers four Support Plan tiers, where the monthly pricing is based on a percentage of your monthly AWS fees. The percentage ranges between 3% – 10%.
Everleap provides 24/7 technical support at no cost, and included with our Managed Hosting fees. Everleap also includes 2 hours of higher-level system administrator or DBA support per month. Customers can use this time for consulting, server or database tuning, database migrations, application/database upgrades …etc.
In addition, over the years Everleap has hosted tens of thousands of sites and databases, and so our staff often observes trending issues early on. If our team does see a trend, we will proactively contact our Managed Hosting customers to help them avoid their sites from being impacted by these emerging threats.
Pricing
If we look at pricing, like other Public Cloud providers, AWS fees are generally metered by an hourly rate. Any partial hours are charged by the second. Although AWS does not charge for incoming data transfer, they do charge for outgoing data transfer. Therefore, in essence, you will only pay for the resources used, but that also means that you will never know how much the charges will be due at the end of every month.
With Everleap’s service, we strive to simplify the hosting costs and we only charge a fixed monthly fee, which is generally less than the AWS fees. Having predictable monthly fees, you will never experience surprise bills.
Conclusion
Amazon AWS is a powerful and scalable global hosting platform with a deep and ever-evolving technology stack. While AWS is developer-friendly and technology-rich, Everleap focuses on the needs of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Everleap offers SMBs with pre-sales and post-sales consulting, setup, site migration, fully-managed hosting, high-touch services, and technical and engineer support, with a predictable flat monthly pricing model.
At the end of the day, you must ultimately decide what the best hosting platform will be for your business application. At Everleap, we believe that we offer a great option to host business websites and business applications. We hope that you conduct your due diligence into all your hosting options to make the best decision for your business.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact Everleap, as we are always open to talk to you about your hosting situation.
Visit Everleap to learn more about our Managed Hosting solutions.
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