AWS Promo Code & Discount Code

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud division of Amazon and by far the largest cloud provider in the world, offering hundreds of services spanning compute, storage, databases, machine learning, networking and more. That breadth is exactly why AWS isn't a natural fit for someone who just wants to host a website — most of its catalog is irrelevant to that job. This review is scoped narrowly to the part of AWS that actually competes with dedicated hosting providers: Amazon Lightsail, AWS's simplified VPS-style product, with a brief mention of EC2 for context.

Lightsail bundles a virtual server, SSD storage, and a fixed monthly data transfer allowance into flat, predictable pricing — a deliberate departure from AWS's usual pay-per-resource billing. The entry-level Linux/Unix plan is $5/month for 0.5 GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, 20 GB SSD storage and 1 TB data transfer. The next tiers are $7/month (1 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD, 2 TB transfer), $12/month (2 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer) and $24/month (4 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD, 4 TB transfer). New accounts can run one eligible bundle ($5–$12/month tiers) free for the first 3 months, up to 750 hours of usage per month, as part of the AWS Free Tier.

EC2, AWS's general-purpose virtual server product, sits one level up — it's the raw building block Lightsail is built on top of, with far more configuration options (instance types, custom networking, granular storage) but also far more setup complexity and no bundled flat-rate pricing. Someone hosting a single WordPress site or small app has little reason to reach for EC2 directly instead of Lightsail. Neither Lightsail nor EC2 comes with a control panel like cPanel — you're provisioning and managing a server yourself (or via one of Lightsail's pre-built application blueprints), not clicking through a hosting dashboard.