What is Amazon Lightsail?
Amazon introduced Lightsail in the end of 2016. Amazon Lightsail is the easiest way to get started with AWS for developers who just need virtual private servers. Lightsail includes everything you need to launch your project quickly – a virtual machine, SSD-based storage, data transfer, DNS management, and a static IP – for a low, predictable price.
How is it different from EC2?
Pricing:
| Plan comparison | Amazon Lightsail | Amazon EC2 |
| 4GB / 2 Cores / 60GB SSD / 4TB data transfer | $40 / month | $408.36 / month |
| 4GB / 2 Cores / 60GB SSD / 150GB data transfer | $40 / month | $53.22 / month |
| 4GB / 2 Cores / 60GB SSD / 150GB data transfer with EC2 1 year all upfront Reservation | $40 / month $480 / year | $18.81 / month $275 upfrontTotal : $500.72 / year |
| 5 x 1gb / 1 core / 20gb ssd + 150gb transfer | $50 / month (total 10TB transfer) | $57.76 / month |
| 5 x 1gb / 1 core / 20gb ssd + 150gb transfer with 1 year all upfront reservation | $50 / month $600 / year | $22.81 / month $345 upfront Total : $618.72 / year |
| 5 x 512mb / 1 core / 20gb ssd + 150gb transfer | $25 / month (total 5TB transfer) | $44.41 / month |
| 5 x 512mb / 1 core / 20gb ssd + 150gb transfer with 1 year all upfront reservation | $25 / month $300 / year | $22.81 / month $170 upfront Total: $443.72
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Pros and cons:
| Amazon Lightsail | Amazon EC2 | |
| Ease of use | Very easy to use and setup. | Relatively complex to setup than Lightsail |
| Flexibility | Very limited. Example – if you want to migrate your database to RDS you need to create an AWS account, setup VPC, setup RDS, enable VPC peering between your AWS VPC and Lightsail internal VPC and then migration will work. | Good amount of flexibility considering if the site grows by leaps in near future. |
| Cost | Fixed cost + huge data transfer limits will ensure that your cost is bound to monthly charge | Variable cost – cost may vary significantly when you enable other AWS services or your data transfer grows significantly |
| Availability | Only one region in US as at the time of writing. | All region in US and across globe. So, you can select the region nearest to your visitors for a faster page load times. |
| DR and backup | Backup is enabled via snapshots but it can get complicated if you host multiple websites on a single machine. No DR as it is in a single AWS region. | Lots of backup and DR options possible. |
| Security | SSH keys etc are by default managed by AWS. Also, the EC2 machine hosting your site runs in their internal AWS VPC. | All SSH keys, security groups etc are controlled by you. |
| Type of EC2 machines available | Fixed – only t2 instance types which have burstable performance | A multitude of instance types are available including t2 types |
| Ease of SSH | Very easy – can SSH from browser itself. Files can be dragged and dropped into the SSH window to copy it to your machine – a very handy feature. | SSH can be done only using terminal. To copy files, SCP needs to be done. |
| Goodies | Free static IP, free DNS management, Server monitoring | Elastic IP available for free. Route 53 available for a charge. |
What should you choose?
If you are new to AWS: go with Lightsail as it will be easy to set up and run your app on it. Moreover, your monthly cost will be fixed assuming you don’t cross your data transfer limits – which is huge – and a site which is insanely popular or servers lot of media might cross this limit.
If you are familiar with AWS: go with AWS if you want more flexibility and be future proof in case your site grows quickly. Or else go with Lightsail if you are just starting off with your new website/blog.
