Large public cloud hosting providers like Google Cloud and AWS EC2 have been dominating the hosting space for the past few years. But how do major cloud providers compare in pricing and features to ServerMania Cloud and Dedicated Servers?

We hear from clients every day that they chose ServerMania Dedicated Servers because, not only is the personalized customer experience much better than traditional Cloud providers like AWS, but the pricing for bandwidth is significantly more affordable for their business.

Just look at this customer testimonial we received:

“We are using our ServerMania Dedicated Server to deliver music into our Delivery Platform. AWS charges through the roof for bandwidth and this seemed like a more sensible step to take.”

Developer, sparemusic.com

There is a time and a place for every type of hosting, but we wanted to explore how bare metal dedicated servers and our Cloud servers compared to Cloud providers like AWS, Google, and others in performance, pricing, and customer experience.

This article will provide an overview of Cloud hosting, explore example cloud pricing comparisons between Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services EC2 and ServerMania Cloud / Dedicated Servers, as well as compare features across these cloud hosting platforms. We will also outline why your business may be more suited towards bare metal servers than Cloud servers.

What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting is an industry buzzword which can mean many different things depending on the context. At its core, cloud computing could be any server hosted in a data center, which would encompass Dedicated or Cloud servers.

But when most people talk about “the cloud” or cloud computing,  they are referring to a cluster of computers, which work together to provide instantly scalable resources and high-availability performance.

Cloud Hosting Advantages and Disadvantages

Cloud hosting sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it? Imagine not having to worry about calculating your exact server needs because you can always upgrade, downgrade, or spin up another virtual machine.

Cloud hosting is a great technology and ServerMania has our own Cloud platform. But it’s not the right choice for everyone.

Here are some advantages and disadvantages of Cloud servers when comparing GCP vs AWS vs ServerMania:

Cloud Hosting Advantages

  • Instantly upgrade or downgrade server resources

  • Automate the creation of new servers via API

  • Experience increased redundancy as server resources are typically backed by redundant technologies

Cloud Hosting Disadvantages

  • Cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are more expensive to create equivalent servers

  • Bandwidth costs are exceptionally high on AWS and GCP compared to ServerMania Cloud and Dedicated hosting

  • Navigating Cloud control panels, especially AWS, can be extremely difficult for novice users

  • Support is difficult to obtain and may be an extra cost to use each month

Reasons For Migrating Away From Cloud Providers

Here are the top reasons that many businesses cite:

  • Performance / Availability Issues
  • Lack of Support
  • Cost was more expensive than expected
  • Regulatory Issues
  • Latency
  • Controlling Cloud Spend

Cloud Pricing Comparison

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We have heard from many clients that bandwidth pricing is a main concern for their business and one of the key reasons for choosing to host their servers on ServerMania . We wanted to see just how expensive servers and bandwidth can cost on these platforms.

We selected servers which were most compatible in terms of specs to our fleet of servers in an attempt to get a 1:1 comparison.

Comparing Cloud Dedicated Hosts: ServerMania vs AWS vs Google Cloud Pricing

We selected several dedicated instances from traditional Cloud providers to see how the pricing stacked up to the ServerMania Cloud.

Amazon Dedicated ServerGoogle Dedicated ServerServerMania Dedicated Server
SpecsC5 Dedicated Instance

36 CPU cores

120GB RAM

640GB SSD

40 CPU Cores

128GB RAM

3x 375GB SSD

Dual Intel Xeon E5-2695v4, 36×2.1 Ghz

128GB RAM

2x500GB SSD

Hardware Price$1771.43/month$1,013.74/month$869.00/month
Contract Term1 Year (price increases 27% without contract)1 yearNo contract, cancel any time.
Bandwidth Price$1791.91 for 20TB of outbound transfer.20TB of Americas/EMEA Bandwidth

$1,955.84/m

20TB Bandwidth @ 1Gbps included for free
Support Costs$303.9 for support with 1 hour response timesFreeFree support with 15 minute response times.
Total Cost$3693.01/month$2,969.58/month$869.00/month

You may be thinking this is not an apples to apples comparison because no server uses 100% of their bandwidth in outgoing bandwidth. But even if AWS or Google Cloud bandwidth were free, the hardware costs are significantly higher than a bare metal dedicated server.

Comparing Cloud Server Pricing

We also wanted to compare smaller virtual instances to our ServerMania Cloud Servers to see how price and performance compared for virtual servers.

ServerMania Cloud Servers can be provisioned instantly and are backed by industry leading technology to deliver a high performance and high availability experience.

ServerMania Dedicated Server

AWSGoogle Cloud Server PricingServerMania Cloud Server
SpecsT3 XLarge

4 CPU Cores

16GB RAM

250GB SSD

4 CPU Cores

15GB RAM

320GB SSD

6 CPU Cores

16GB RAM

320GB SSD

Hardware Price$161.79/month$167.71/month$80/month
Contract TermMonth to month or 1 Year ContractNo contract ($117/mo on a 1 year contract)No contract, cancel any time.
Bandwidth Price$460.71 for 5TB of outbound bandwidth$425for 5TB of outbound bandwidth.8TB included for free
Support Costs$303.9 for support with 1 hour response timesFreeFree support with 15 minute response times.
Total Cost$622.99 USD/month$552.09 USD/month$80 USD/month

Which cloud service is cheapest?

Of the companies that we compared, ServerMania is the cheapest option for both servers and bandwidth. There are most certainly cheaper providers than us as we are committed to providing a reliable and top-performing Cloud, not the cheapest one. But we do represent a significant price savings when compared to many major providers.

“If I had the resources, I would certainly move all our infrastructure from AWS to ServerMania since AWS is very expensive to operate and lacks the customer service ServerMania has provided.”

DevOps Director, Comodo

Cloud Server Feature Comparison

FeatureGoogle CloudAWS EC2ServerMania Cloud ServerServerMania Dedicated Server
Dedicated Resources
Affordable Bandwidth
Easy to Follow Interface
Scale Resources
Dedicated Account Manager Available
API Available
Network Uptime SLA99.99%99.99%100%100%
Support$100 – $250 per user for 1-4 hour response times. $15,000+ for enterprises.$25 – $15,000+ per month.15 minute response times  Included for free or fully managed from $119/month.15 minute response times  Included for free or fully managed from $119/month.

Conclusion

In summary, a Cloud provider like Google Cloud and AWS EC2 each provide a reliable experience, but the cost for server instances and bandwidth is significantly more expensive than ServerMania when reviewing pricing.

It is also completely infeasible for any business with high bandwidth needs and requires you to hire staff who are competent in the API of the Cloud provider.

We would recommend reviewing the feature list above to see if there are any features of one platform over another that are important to your business. We’ve seen many customers who, now that their business has grown, their Cloud hosting costs on Amazon or Google are exceptionally high and it becomes very expensive to migrate away.

Most businesses will find that the personalized support and server experience that ServerMania provides is not only more affordable for controlling cloud spend, but also better performance. To top it off, when you choose a server provider like ServerMania, you have access to a dedicated Account Manager and a 24×7 rapid response support team at no additional charge.

Want to learn more? Book a free consultation today to discuss how cloud provider ServerMania can meet your server needs.

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