Amazon EC2 vs PythonAnywhere

Overview

Amazon EC2

Stacks48.6K

Followers36.0K

Votes2.5K

PythonAnywhere

Stacks90

Followers293

Votes64

Amazon EC2 vs PythonAnywhere: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this analysis, we will compare Amazon EC2 and PythonAnywhere, two popular web hosting platforms. We will point out the key differences between the two services to help potential users make an informed decision on which one better suits their needs.

Flexibility and Scalability: Amazon EC2 offers more flexibility and scalability compared to PythonAnywhere. With EC2, users can choose from a wide range of instance types and sizes, allowing them to customize their server specifications based on their specific requirements. On the other hand, PythonAnywhere offers limited options in terms of server customization and scalability.
Deployment and Management: While both platforms allow easy deployment of web applications, Amazon EC2 offers more advanced management options. EC2 provides users with powerful tools for monitoring and managing their instances, including automated scaling, load balancing, and infrastructure as code capabilities. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, simplifies the deployment process but does not offer as many advanced management features.
Pricing and Cost: Pricing is a significant differentiating factor between Amazon EC2 and PythonAnywhere. EC2 follows a pay-as-you-go model, where users are billed based on the resources consumed. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, offers fixed pricing plans with predetermined resource allocations. This means that EC2 can be more cost-effective for applications with varying resource needs, while PythonAnywhere may be better suited for smaller projects with predictable resource requirements.
Server Access and Control: With Amazon EC2, users have complete control over their virtual servers. They have the ability to install and configure any software they need and have full root access to the operating system. In PythonAnywhere, the level of server access and control is more limited. Users can only install and utilize a predefined set of software packages and do not have root access to the operating system.
Ecosystem and Integration: Amazon EC2 is part of the larger Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem, which offers a wide range of cloud services and integrations. This allows users to easily integrate their EC2 instances with other AWS services such as S3 for storage or RDS for databases. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, does not have such an extensive ecosystem and integration options. It primarily focuses on providing a platform for hosting and running Python web applications.
Support and Documentation: When it comes to support and documentation, Amazon EC2 has a comprehensive knowledge base and a vast community of users. This means there are extensive resources available to help users troubleshoot issues and find solutions. PythonAnywhere also provides support and documentation, but it may not be as extensive or have as large of a user community compared to AWS.

In summary, Amazon EC2 offers more flexibility, scalability, advanced management features, and integration options compared to PythonAnywhere. However, PythonAnywhere provides a simpler and more cost-effective solution for smaller projects with predictable resource needs. Overall, the choice between the two platforms depends on the specific requirements and goals of the web application being developed.

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Advice on Amazon EC2, PythonAnywhere

Craig

Principal Consultant at Rootwork InfoTech LLC

Jul 16, 2020

Decided

We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.

200k views200k

Comments

Jerome/Zen

Software Engineer

Aug 2, 2020

Needs advice

DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.

However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.

One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.

Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.

264k views264k

Comments

Abigail

Dec 10, 2019

Decided

Most bioinformatics shops nowadays are hosting on AWS or Azure, since they have HIPAA tiers and offer enterprise SLA contracts. Meanwhile Heroku hasn't historically supported HIPAA. Rackspace and Google Cloud would be other hosting providers we would consider, but we just don't get requests for them. So, we mostly focus on AWS and Azure support.

156k views156k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon EC2	PythonAnywhere
It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.	It's somewhat unique. A small PaaS that supports web apps (Python only) as well as scheduled jobs with shell access. It is an expensive way to tinker and run several small apps.
Elastic – Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously.;Completely Controlled – You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine.;Flexible – You have the choice of multiple instance types, operating systems, and software packages. Amazon EC2 allows you to select a configuration of memory, CPU, instance storage, and the boot partition size that is optimal for your choice of operating system and application.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.;Reliable – Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and predictably commissioned. The Amazon EC2 Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.95% availability for each Amazon EC2 Region.;Secure – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon VPC to provide security and robust networking functionality for your compute resources.;Inexpensive – Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon’s scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume.;Easy to Start – Quickly get started with Amazon EC2 by visiting AWS Marketplace to choose preconfigured software on Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). You can quickly deploy this software to EC2 via 1-Click launch or with the EC2 console.	-
Statistics
Stacks 48.6K	Stacks 90
Followers 36.0K	Followers 293
Votes 2.5K	Votes 64
Pros & Cons
Pros 647 Quick and reliable cloud servers 515 Scalability 393 Easy management 277 Low cost 271 Auto-scaling Cons 14 Ui could use a lot of work 6 High learning curve when compared to PaaS 3 Extremely poor CPU performance	Pros 15 Web apps 11 Easy Setup 8 Free plan 8 Shell access 8 Great support Cons 1 Really small community 1 No root access
Integrations
No integrations available	Python

What are some alternatives to Amazon EC2, PythonAnywhere?

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

DigitalOcean

We take the complexities out of cloud hosting by offering blazing fast, on-demand SSD cloud servers, straightforward pricing, a simple API, and an easy-to-use control panel.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.

Linode

Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

Scaleway

European cloud computing company proposing a complete & simple public cloud ecosystem, bare-metal servers & private datacenter infrastructures.

Related Comparisons

Amazon EC2 vs PythonAnywhere: What are the differences?

Introduction

Flexibility and Scalability: Amazon EC2 offers more flexibility and scalability compared to PythonAnywhere. With EC2, users can choose from a wide range of instance types and sizes, allowing them to customize their server specifications based on their specific requirements. On the other hand, PythonAnywhere offers limited options in terms of server customization and scalability.
Deployment and Management: While both platforms allow easy deployment of web applications, Amazon EC2 offers more advanced management options. EC2 provides users with powerful tools for monitoring and managing their instances, including automated scaling, load balancing, and infrastructure as code capabilities. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, simplifies the deployment process but does not offer as many advanced management features.
Pricing and Cost: Pricing is a significant differentiating factor between Amazon EC2 and PythonAnywhere. EC2 follows a pay-as-you-go model, where users are billed based on the resources consumed. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, offers fixed pricing plans with predetermined resource allocations. This means that EC2 can be more cost-effective for applications with varying resource needs, while PythonAnywhere may be better suited for smaller projects with predictable resource requirements.
Server Access and Control: With Amazon EC2, users have complete control over their virtual servers. They have the ability to install and configure any software they need and have full root access to the operating system. In PythonAnywhere, the level of server access and control is more limited. Users can only install and utilize a predefined set of software packages and do not have root access to the operating system.
Ecosystem and Integration: Amazon EC2 is part of the larger Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem, which offers a wide range of cloud services and integrations. This allows users to easily integrate their EC2 instances with other AWS services such as S3 for storage or RDS for databases. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, does not have such an extensive ecosystem and integration options. It primarily focuses on providing a platform for hosting and running Python web applications.
Support and Documentation: When it comes to support and documentation, Amazon EC2 has a comprehensive knowledge base and a vast community of users. This means there are extensive resources available to help users troubleshoot issues and find solutions. PythonAnywhere also provides support and documentation, but it may not be as extensive or have as large of a user community compared to AWS.

Amazon EC2 vs PythonAnywhere

Overview

Amazon EC2 vs PythonAnywhere: What are the differences?