If you plan to use a small, fixed number of servers and run them 24/7, then EC2 probably will not save you much. It may even be more expensive. The price advantage works best for tasks that need flexibility. Sites that alternate between high demand and low demand, periodic or one-off processing intensive tasks where a 24/7 server is overkill-- that's where you really see the benefits of EC2.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Anews.ycombin...

It really depends on what you are planning to do. 1. If you need a server for a longer term - or need to make serve web pages on demand then ec2 doesnt seem like a very good option - not that cheap, server might trip and you might loose state, and respnose times are not that great. 2. It is good for batch processing tasks that you can pile on multiple machines and then let go of the machines. You get work done faster (parallel) and is cheaper than any other option out there.

I don't really think that EC2 should be considered a direct replacement for dedicated servers for your average web app, but if you have a need that can leverage the on-demand nature of EC2, then it's a great solution.

We use S3 and love it.

Thanks to everyone who's posted. I've been reading about some negatives - slow response times. Has this been fixed or is it something that still happens still now?

I wrote this app to test EC2's speed.

http://www.instantwordsearch.com/

It gets a lot of visitors thru StumbleUpon and has held up pretty good in terms of speed - over a period of few months.

I use s3 for backing up stuff and some graphic storage for a couple of my websites and love it. I use SGBPfox for firefox.

I use S3 to store all the high and low res images for JPGmag.com and they have performed amazingly.

I am. S3, SQS, and EC2. It's incredible from a cost perspective. I highly recommend you look into it.

Thanks. Going to play with it this weekend.

ec2 + s3 is awesome. saved my but a lot.