The REAL Cost Of AWS (And How To Avoid It)
Summary
TLDRIn this video, the speaker addresses concerns about the cost of recommended services for small projects and startups, arguing that they are more cost-effective than AWS. They highlight generous free tiers, the hidden costs of in-house development, and the time-saving benefits of using these services. The speaker emphasizes that these tools not only save time but also reduce costs through efficient scaling and caching, ultimately providing a better return on investment for businesses.
Takeaways
- 💡 The services recommended have very generous free tiers, which can accommodate small projects and startups without incurring costs.
- 📊 The cost of setting up and maintaining infrastructure on AWS can be high in terms of time and effort, which is often overlooked when considering 'cheaper' alternatives.
- 💼 Engineers may undervalue their time, but the time spent on setup and maintenance can be significant and costly for a company.
- 🔒 Job security can be a factor when using complex, self-hosted solutions, as it can be challenging to find a replacement with the same setup knowledge.
- 💼 For companies, especially startups, it's more cost-effective to focus on developing unique business features rather than optimizing AWS costs.
- 🚀 Services like Vercel, PlanetScale, Clerk, and others offer benefits like 'scale to zero', which means you only pay for the resources you actively use.
- 💰 These services can lead to actual cost savings by allowing for efficient scaling, caching, and reduced need for server maintenance.
- 🛠️ Using services like Vercel's edge functions can significantly reduce compute costs due to their低廉的 invocation pricing and caching capabilities.
- 💡 The speaker emphasizes that these services are recommended based on their time, money, and energy-saving benefits, not because of sponsorships.
- 💼 The speaker challenges the notion that self-hosting is always cheaper, arguing that it often costs more in the long run due to the complexity and maintenance involved.
Q & A
What is the main concern people have about the services recommended on the channel?
-People are concerned that the services recommended are more expensive than using AWS directly, especially for low budget teams.
How does the speaker refute the claim that AWS is cheaper?
-The speaker refutes this by explaining the generous free tiers of the services recommended, the cost savings in terms of developer time, and the actual cost savings due to the services' features.
What is the significance of the free tier for services like PlanetScale?
-The free tier for services like PlanetScale is very generous, offering a billion row reads and 10 million row writes per month for free, which is more than enough for many small projects.
How much does it cost to go over the free tier limits on PlanetScale?
-If you go over the free tier limits on PlanetScale, it costs one dollar per billion reads and one dollar and fifty cents per million writes.
What is the speaker's opinion on the pricing of services like Clerk compared to Auth0?
-The speaker believes that the pricing of Clerk is very similar to professional solutions like Auth0, with a hobby tier that is affordable and doesn't require a credit card.
Why is the time spent by engineers setting up and maintaining services considered expensive?
-The time spent by engineers is considered expensive because it can take days or weeks to solve problems and set up services like CI/CD, databases, and serverless traffic handling, which translates to a significant cost in terms of lost productivity.
What is the benefit of using recommended services in terms of job security?
-Using recommended services can increase job security because the complex setup an engineer creates becomes reliant on their expertise, making it harder to replace them.
What is the speaker's advice for companies regarding the cost of developer time?
-The speaker advises companies to understand the value of their engineers' time and to let them focus on tasks that drive unique business differentiators rather than optimizing AWS costs.
How do services like Vercel and PlanetScale help in reducing actual costs?
-Services like Vercel and PlanetScale help reduce costs by allowing scale to zero, meaning you only pay for the compute you use, and by providing features that minimize the need for unused compute.
What is the cost of using Vercel's edge functions in the pro tier?
-The cost of using Vercel's edge functions in the pro tier is 65 cents per million invocations.
Why does the speaker recommend services like Vercel, PlanetScale, Clerk, and others?
-The speaker recommends these services because they save time, money, and energy, and make it faster to develop the right solution for users at any scale.
Outlines
💸 The Generosity of Free Tiers
The speaker addresses concerns about the cost of services recommended on the channel, particularly for low-budget teams. They argue that the free tiers of recommended services are very generous, allowing extensive use without charge. They give the example of Versel's free tier, which offers a billion row reads and 10 million row writes per month for free. Even when upgrading to a paid plan, the cost remains minimal, with Versel charging only one dollar per billion reads and one dollar and fifty cents per million writes after the free tier is exceeded. The speaker emphasizes that the cost savings from these services are significant and that their recommendation is based on the value they provide, not on margin.
🕒 The True Cost of DIY Solutions
The speaker discusses the hidden costs of setting up and maintaining infrastructure using AWS directly, as opposed to using recommended services. They highlight that engineers often undervalue their time, which can be costly when spent on tasks like setting up CI/CD, configuring databases, and managing serverless traffic. The speaker shares personal experiences of spending significant time on such tasks, which could have been better used for developing unique business solutions. They argue that the time saved by using recommended services is valuable and can lead to significant cost savings, especially when considering the high cost of change in most companies. The speaker suggests that the cost of maintaining complex setups can outweigh the minor savings of using AWS directly.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Free Tier
💡PlanetScale
💡Clerk
💡CI/CD
💡Serverless
💡Edge Functions
💡Caching
💡Job Security
💡Cost of Change
💡Developer Experience
Highlights
Services recommended have a very generous free tier, which can be used for a long time.
Planet Scale's free tier offers a billion row reads and 10 million row writes per month for free.
Upgrading to Planet Scale's $30/month plan increases the free tier benefits significantly.
The cost for exceeding the free tier on Planet Scale is very low, at $1 per billion reads and $1.50 per million writes.
Planet Scale's pricing model is based on database usage rather than reads and writes, making it very cost-effective.
Planet Scale passes on cost savings to customers by focusing on upselling additional features and developer experience.
Clerk's pricing is similar to other professional solutions like Auth0, with a hobby tier starting at $25/month.
Clerk's free tier allows unlimited sign-ins without a credit card, up to 5,000 users in a month.
Additional users on Clerk are priced at two cents each in the hobby tier and five cents in the business tier.
The cost of setting up and maintaining infrastructure like CI/CD and databases can be time-consuming and expensive.
The time spent on setup and maintenance can be hundreds of hours, which is a significant cost.
Using recommended services can save time and money, as they are designed to be cost-effective and efficient.
Services like Vercel and Planet Scale allow for scaling to zero, meaning no cost for unused compute.
Using services that scale based on usage can lead to significant cost savings compared to self-hosted solutions.
Edge functions can be extremely cost-effective, with Vercel's pro tier pricing at $0.65 per million invocations.
Caching and CDN setup can save a lot of compute costs and are part of the recommended services' benefits.
The recommended services not only save time but also lead to actual cost savings through efficient billing mechanisms and features.
Self-hosting backends and services should be done only if there's a strong reason, as it's usually more expensive.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding the true cost of engineering time and the value of developer experience.
Transcripts
I keep hearing concern about the cost of
the services I recommend on the channel
in particular for low budget teams
trying to spin up side projects small
apps and all sorts of things saying it's
cheaper to use AWS directly and not to
use the tech that I recommend and that's
fine you're wrong in three ways and I
want to talk about those so let's do it
the first one is how long you can get
away with the free tier for almost all
the services I recommend have a very
very generous free tier like
disgustingly generous I've not shipped a
service to date that doesn't fit within
versel's free tier even the stuff y'all
spam when I post it Planet Skills free
tier gives you a billion row reads a
month and 10 million row rights a month
for free and when you upgrade to the 30
a month plan that becomes a hundred
billion reads and 50 million rights do
you want to know how much it costs if
you somehow go over one dollar per
billion reads afterwards and one dollar
and fifty cents per million rights
thereafter that's insane Planet scale is
effectively free your build on how many
databases you host not on your reads and
rights it's insane how cheap Planet
scale is when you scale your databases
properly they become cheap and they're
passing the cost savings on because they
can make their money on the Enterprise
scale Planet scale doesn't win based on
how much margin they make on their
servers per compute they win based on
how much they can upsell you on the
additional features in developer
experience that they provide they found
a technical win and they scale developer
experience on top and the result is just
really really hard to beat and if we
look at the other services that I
recommend stuff like clerk the pricing
is very similar to other professional
Solutions like auth zero they have a
hobby tier 25 bucks a month that isn't
limited to the 5 000 monthly active
users of the free tier yes that's right
no credit card unlimited sign-ins but up
to 5 000 users can exist in a given
month and they have pricing for overage
yeah included monthly active users
they're active if they've visited and
then it's two cents for each additional
user at the hobby tier
five cents for the business tier because
they have a bunch of additional features
integrated and they have obviously
discounts if you do like big business
stuff each additional employee that you
have working inside of the clerk
dashboard is initial 20 bucks but you
probably don't need too many of those
because you can just share the
environment variables and everyone's
good to go it's
pretty cheap like your free tier window
is massive and the rest is super cheap
as well the same goes for upstash and
Axiom I don't need to go into all the
details of all of these the point I'm
trying to make is very specifically the
free tier carries you really far so what
are these other two points the next one
I want to focus in on is how expensive
you are it's easy for us as Engineers to
think of our time as cheap because it's
ours and we can spend it however we want
but when it comes to stuff like setting
up CI and CD correctly or connecting
your database in setting up your PG
bouncer to handle serverless traffic the
types of problems I dealt with when I
was using AWS myself took time to solve
sometimes days sometimes weeks always
including a lot of Maintenance long term
and the amount of time I have lost
setting up PG bouncers switching
databases between platforms figuring out
how appsync or amplify and all these
other things work and trying to get CI
CD linked to GitHub properly is insane
we're talking hundreds upon hundreds of
hours and whether or not I like to admit
it that's expensive if I'm doing that
for a company that's more expensive
there is a benefit here
job security if I have all of this
effort I've put into setting everything
up and now I have this complex setup
that we rely on if I then decide to
leave I have to put a lot of work in
finding a replacement who can maintain
whatever chaos I have set up there if
the benefit there is a few less cents a
month per whatever depends on how many
whatevers there are before that number
matters other extremes have talked about
the line of prime the point at which a
service is stable enough in its feature
set and trafficked enough and its usage
patterns where it makes sense to rewrite
it in a stable self-hosted thing to
really try and minimize cost but most of
us are very far from that point even
y'all working at big companies because
most code is changing and the cost of
change is high I would venture to bet
that the majority of the companies y'all
work at it would be more expensive for
the company to pay you to build versus
developer experience than to pay for
sell to use their existing experience
and the same goes for everything we
recommend on this channel these tools
save real amounts of time and that time
might not be valuable to you in your
head as a developer but for me as a team
lead and a person who runs companies and
also invests in companies it's important
to understand how valuable your
engineer's time is so that your
engineers can use that time in things
that drive unique business
differentiators your engineer should be
spending time making your product better
for your users so you can beat your
competition not making your AWS cheaper
so that you can feel good about yourself
and your job security at night as you're
paid 200k a year to save the company 100
bucks a month but we're not even at the
most important thing these Services
actually save money I'm not talking time
saved money I'm not talking free to your
money I'm talking the actual benefits of
these Services allow you to build things
that run at cheaper costs the first
thing is scale to zero you're not paying
for compute you're not using if you set
up your kubernetes and your terraform
and everything correctly you can
minimize how much compute you're paying
for that goes unused but if you're
spinning up servers then your running
server first and if you're running
servers you're paying for a compute that
isn't being used period you use services
like for sale and Planet scale you're
not paying when the month ends you're
paying when the users use the service
and that billing mechanism makes it much
easier to flex your costs based on usage
of every single part of what you're
building it is significantly easier to
scale your pricing based on the scale of
your application rather than spinning up
things and letting them sit and paying
for a bunch of servers you're not
actually using on top of that you can
save a ton of compute using things like
versel's cache Primitives and
incremental static regeneration only
actually Computing on the server when
things have changed or on planet scale
using database.js package to hit their
HTTP endpoint instead of making a SQL
connection meaning you can avoid setting
up pools and bouncers and all these
other things you normally have to set up
to maintain your connection to your
database you can just hit it from an
edge function and Edge functions are
hilariously cheap like let's just go
look at Versailles pricing quick for
sales edge pricing on the pro tier is 65
cents per million invocations that means
every million times your Edge function
runs it costs you 65 cents and it only
runs if it doesn't have data in the
cache already so if you're caching your
responses and you're only invalidating
them on user requests or specifically
interactions like I'm only going to
update the posts on my profile on
Twitter when I make a new post then
every other request is hitting a cache
and not actually running compute at all
it's so much cheaper to Cache a response
than to run a server that processes
every single request like comically so
in setting up your caching and your CDN
all that stuff correctly goes back into
the second category of cost savings
where you're paying your engineers a lot
of money to get that all set up and
maintained correctly the benefit of
versel in Planet scale and Clerk and
Axiom and upstash and all the other T3
deploy Partners who are not paying me to
make this video to be very very clear
the reason I recommended them before
they paid me is because they saved me
time money and energy they made it
faster for me to develop the right
solution for my users at every scale
I've ever worked at and I feel like when
you all say these things are too
expensive you don't actually see where
the cost is so I hope this is helpful
and y'all having a slightly better
understanding of why these services are
indeed cheaper than your AWS based
Alternatives and if you're hosting your
own backends and you're hosting your own
Services you better have a damn good
reason because you are costing more
money the vast majority of the time I
hope this was helpful I've been holding
this rant in for a while and I think it
shows with how it came out let me know
what you thought about it I'm I'm gonna
love the comment section on this one I'm
sure you want to hear more about all the
info I use and recommend I'll pin that
video right here I put a lot of effort
into that one so please check it out
thank you as always peace nerds
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