Amazon Lightsail: Evaluation

• Amazon Lightsail Hosting product
• Price starts at $3.50 per month.
• Ideal for: Websites, Blogs, and Web Applications in general
• A fantastic hosting solution with advanced features that offers simple setup and management without the need for specialized expertise.

Try out for free for a period of 30 days.

Amazon Lightsail overview

When thinking about Amazon AWS services, many people find it challenging to configure and manage the various services available.

Amazon has developed Lightsail, a hosting service designed to cater to a growing independent audience seeking fast application deployment. This service simplifies website and web application setup and hosting, catering to users of all levels of expertise.

Those who believe Amazon Lightsail is simply a standard web hosting platform are mistaken. Amazon Lightsail provides a range of advanced services leveraging Amazon’s global server infrastructure, such as DNS management, load balancing, data backup with Snapshots, reliable storage, API support, and more.

Strengths and weaknesses

The Amazon Lightsail includes characteristics.

Lightsail Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Lightsail offers the same AWS instance solution, allowing users to select from various operating systems like Ubuntu, Debian, Windows Server, and “Amazon Linux,” which is the recommended standard Linux OS by Amazon for optimal compatibility with AWS services.

Amazon Lightsail provides pre-installed and configured apps, such as WordPress, Node.js, and Magento, in addition to operating systems.

High availability storage

The Amazon Lightsail storage system allows for quick and easy expansion of disk space with just a few clicks. It utilizes SSD technology for improved performance and faster data access, with minimal latencies. The system is designed to work in blocks to guarantee high availability of over 99.99% and rapid scalability.

The expenses for expanding the disks amount to $1.0 per extra Gigabyte monthly, allowing scalability up to 49 Terabytes with a maximum of 15 disks per instance.

Images captured quickly

The Snapshot feature functions like a snapshot of your instance, preserving data, services, settings, and everything in operation at that moment. It incurs a charge of $0.05 per extra Gigabyte each month and employs encryption security in the same storage system noted earlier.

Load Balancing made simpler

One significant advantage of Lightsail is its ability to enable load balancing on your website or virtual store without the need for external services. This feature enhances the availability of your environment and helps prevent sales from being lost on busy days like Black Friday. Load balancing involves creating copies of your instance in the same region as the original and distributing traffic between them to prevent overload.

The initial cost may appear steep at $18.00 extra per month. However, for individuals reliant on sales or those managing high-traffic services or websites, having instances with enhanced computing resources is beneficial. This also provides a secure balance. Moreover, this service offers users free SSL/TLS certificates with easy setup and centralized certificate management.

Application Programming Interface

Amazon offers the Lightsail API for experienced developers, which assists in creating and managing instances using its CLI and a development SDK to simplify the development of solutions on this platform.

Upgrade to EC2 and linking with other AWS services.

Amazon offers the option to migrate your Lightsail environment to a future EC2 instance for the continuous improvement of customer solutions. The migration process involves generating a snapshot of the current instance and creating a new one in the EC2 environment, ensuring compatibility.

AWS offers supplementary services that are compatible with Lightsail, including CDNs, specific databases like DynamoDB, Big Data solutions, and messenger services, which can be beneficial for many websites.

Databases that are managed

Some applications may require specialized database access, and Amazon provides an additional solution through Lightsail to meet these needs. These managed databases by AWS offer scalability and extra resources for your instance, although they come at an additional cost. Below is a table showing the pricing details.

The table above illustrates a plan named High Availability that provides reliable access to the bank. By integrating this feature with your application’s high availability, websites experiencing heavy traffic are unlikely to encounter access issues, thanks to a straightforward and user-friendly solution.

All Lightsail packages come with:

• Static IP address is a fixed, unchanging IP address.
• Managing DNS
• Server supervision
• Accessing the SSH terminal on Linux/Unix.
• Management Console with an intuitive interface
• Access to Remote Desktop Protocol (Windows)
• Key management that is safe and secure

Amazon Lightsail pricing and subscription options

Lightsail’s prices are significantly lower than those of other AWS services and even more competitive than its rivals, like DigitalOcean. The most affordable plan in the Linux environment is priced at $3.50 per month, which translates to approximately R$ 14.00 including taxes. On the other hand, the Windows plan is slightly pricier, starting at $8.00, primarily because of Microsoft system licensing expenses. Below are the details of all available plans:

Linux and Unix operating systems

Windows operating system

Availability zones are different physical locations within a region that are isolated from each other.

Amazon data centers are situated in availability zones, separate locations with energy, Internet access points, and physical access located in different places, possibly even different countries. This setup provides protection from natural disasters and cyber attacks, making high availability environments secure and dependable.

The Lightsail environment is currently accessible in 13 worldwide regions situated in AWS Data Centers.

• Eastern United States (Northern Virginia)
• Ohio is located in the eastern part of the United States.
• Western United States (Oregon)
• Central Canada
• Europe is represented by Frankfurt.
• Europe specifically Ireland
• London in Europe
• Paris in Europe.
• Asia Pacific (Mumbai) can be referred to as the region of Asia that includes Mumbai.
• Asia Pacific (Singapore)
• Asia Pacific (Sydney) – Sydney in the Asia Pacific region
• Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
• Asia Pacific (Southern region)

AWS operates in 20 geographic regions worldwide, including São Paulo in Brazil. You can find the full list of available locations on the AWS website.

Assistance

Amazon offers various resources to assist users, such as Lightsail documentation and support forums. Additionally, registered users can access Quick Assist on Lightsail for instant tips on console actions and round-the-clock customer service. For more specialized support needs, users can opt for AWS Support, which provides advanced solutions and quicker troubleshooting responses.

In closing

Amazon has done well by creating this solution, which may be difficult to understand for those new to hosting services.

Lightsail offers easy scalability and stability with redundancy in Data Centers across multiple countries, all available with just a few clicks and at reasonable prices.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to establish a Data Center instance in Brazil due to the high costs associated with maintaining such a structure within our tax system. This could be a concern for those relying on low-latency solutions.

It’s worth noting that users can exceed transfer rate limits without changing their instance by paying a small additional fee each month. This option ensures the convenience of having a peak of access in a specific month without the need to modify the entire environment structure.

Visit the Amazon Lightsail page to enjoy a 30-day free trial if you’re interested in trying it out without any obligations.

Publication date: 20/02/2019 (last revised on 26/01/2022)

Tags: Evaluations