Can AWS Run Small Websites and Forums?

Gizmo

Gizmo

New member
I usually see AWS talked about for huge companies and massive apps, but I’m curious about the smaller side of things.

Can AWS realistically be used to run:
  • Small websites
  • Personal blogs
  • Community forums
  • Low-traffic projects
What have you personally built using AWS?
 
I ran a battlefield forum that grossly out-sized what I could get from shared hosting, and I had no experience with the dedicated server market, so I went with what I knew.

I ran a XenForo forum with EC2 as the compute engine, RDS as the dedicated DB layer, and all images, attachments etc, served via S3/Cloudfront.

No doubt the infrastructure could handle it, but the cost was too high to justify for the small user space (50,000 user forum)
 
I haven’t tried it myself, but I think AWS can definitely run small websites and forums. Its flexibility allows you to start with minimal resources and scale up only if traffic grows, though setup might be more technical than traditional hosting.
 
I haven't used AWS because I run small sites, I do not have a necessity of lot of resources for my site. But if my sites grow big, I would certainly consider AWS. I think AWS is more appropriate for larger web projects that need a lot of security and storage.
 
To the best of my knowledge, it's possible to build almost any type of digital product or system using AWS. I know a very good friend of mine who used it to build social media apps. I haven't done that yet but if I'm going to, it's going to be the path I'll follow.
 
Martha said:
I haven’t tried it myself, but I think AWS can definitely run small websites and forums. Its flexibility allows you to start with minimal resources and scale up only if traffic grows, though setup might be more technical than traditional hosting.
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I think for the smaller use cases out there, you might want to look at something like AWS Lightsail (https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/). This is more in line with a traditional VPS offering, as opposed to a true cloud offering.
Ja sa bong said:
To the best of my knowledge, it's possible to build almost any type of digital product or system using AWS. I know a very good friend of mine who used it to build social media apps. I haven't done that yet but if I'm going to, it's going to be the path I'll follow.
Click to expand...
It really comes down to a number of things when thinking about what cloud to go with (Google, Azure, AWS).

1. What toolsets are available to you (Ec2, Lambda, etc)
2. Budget - AWS has some crazy credit offerings for new workloads on their environment. This is the old crack dealer model. Get them hooked with low/free cost 'offering', and they are unlikely to get elsewhere. Especially if you need to refactor your application.
 
Martha said:
I haven’t tried it myself, but I think AWS can definitely run small websites and forums. Its flexibility allows you to start with minimal resources and scale up only if traffic grows, though setup might be more technical than traditional hosting.
Click to expand...

It won't hurt for small website owners to start with the free version on AWS. It gives an idea of what offers are available for web hosting and also what they can get when they upgrade to the premium options in the future. That being said, it is important that one looks at why they are upgrading before deciding on upgrading to the paid version because of how much it costs.
 
Yes, AWS services can be used to run small websites and forums. Looking at that, the kind of project you want to run is going to determine which aspect of AWS services you're going to be needing. The free service AWS can be an option but to what extent if you're looking at working with a bigger project?
 
AWS can certainly run small websites and forums, but the real question is whether its advanced features and scalability are necessary for smaller projects, or if simpler, cheaper hosting would be more practical.
 
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