AWS Cloud isn’t without its flaws, however it does offer a hell of a lot for cloud-first startups and SMBs.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) dominates the public cloud market, offering easy, pay-as-you-use hosting with global coverage across a plethora of products. Whether it’s to host a simple wordpress installation, the entirety of Netflix or the foundations of a fast-growing startup, AWS cloud is the leader of the cloud hosting game by a country mile.

Flexibility, deployment speed, performance and the free tier on offer make it the well documented go-to choice for enterprises, small businesses and individuals. In this blog, we’re going to explore a few of the reasons why new and exciting startups should consider host with Amazon from day one, along with a few tips to ensure you make the most of it.

Ease of setup

With a mass of documentation and tutorials to get to grips with the ins and outs of AWS, getting started isn’t only quick but also pain free… even for beginners. Creating virtual servers is a far cry from having to build and configure a physical server. Virtually spinning up and managing a server can take place in a matter of minutes, plus AWS can load balance and scale your infrastructure to cope with demand surges.

Supporting rapid growth

In startup world, entrepreneurs, marketers and product teams are focused on finding that one thing that’ll skyrocket an idea or application into the stratosphere. Whether it’s that one piece of TechCrunch coverage, a chance Twitter endorsement from the right influencer or even just that tipping point where things really start to fly, the last thing you should be worrying about is downtime and overworked servers.

AWS auto scaling means that during busy times, additional resources are called upon to ensure great performance. Once the buzz from that one event or article has died down, AWS scales right back to the amount you need, helping you cope with the ever-changing server demands that come with a tech startup.

A plethora of ready made services

From AWS Shield, Amazon’s managed protection service to Amazon Aurora, a MySQL database combining the best bits of commercial and open source databases, Amazon has a bunch of ready to go products and services that mean your startup is always focused on creating in and for the cloud. This takes away the man hours involved in getting things up and running by providing you with a quick and easy solution to each new project.

The free tier

We’ve shot a whole video on this topic, which you can check out on our YouTube channel, but one of the main things that lures startups into using Amazon is the free tier available across a range of products.

Not only does this allow startups to get a feel for the cloud for a whole year, it presents substantial savings that will make a huge difference to pre-funding startups where every penny counts. Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so it’s not free forever and it allows for only a certain amount of use, meaning you pay the second you start going over the free threshold, which could prove a problem if your startup takes off overnight like we mentioned in a previous point.

Managed public cloud for startups

In the early days of a startup, there’s a lot of decisions to be made, changes to undertake and growing pains to work through. In order to get the best out of the cloud and ensure it consistently supports your growing business, the insight of a managed cloud provider can prove vital for startups, supporting your technology, leaving you to focus on growing the business and improving the product.

Why don’t AWS provide this level of one on one support?
Well, with millions of customers– some of which include Unilever and General Electric (we’re talking serious scale here)–AWS can’t physically offer the level of hand holding and help startups could use to make the most of their cloud platform. AWS excel at allowing you to get servers up and running quickly–very quickly–but when it comes to the consultative side of your infrastructure, it pays for startups to have the insight of experts on-hand to help you get it right, first time.

While direct support will cost your startup slightly more upfront, the peace of mind that experts are at the other end of the phone–compared to joining AWS support call centres when you need a helping hand–makes a real difference and could save a pretty penny in the long run.

Having worked in startups ourselves, we know exactly how fast things change and the disruption this can cause. By partnering with a cloud provider from the early days (let’s face it, you aren’t going to have masses of traffic, users or infrastructure yet, so it’s not going to cost much), you can get the power of leading expertise like Cloudhelix injected into your technology.

What does this mean in reality? That you don’t have to learn the hard way. Bouncing every idea, whether it’s from the back of fag packet or a meticulously planned waterfall document, past our experts before you get stuck in means we can help you avoid vendor lock-in, ensure you use the most appropriate solutions for today and in the future (at the right price) plus so much more. We’ll even assist by agreeing a means of payment that suits your budgets. We want to be a part of your success story, and we know that startups don’t always have the upfront capital to cover their future.

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