This sounds pretty great. I haven't used Heroku, but have used Rackspace, AWS and Linode.
What worries me the most with AWS, is that there's virtually no support. I guess you can pay and get decent support, but on the low-end of the scale, it's pretty thin or non-existent. Now, I don't hear of so many issues with AWS that warrant contacting support about, and I don't face any issues myself, but just the thought of something going strange and having nobody to talk to makes me nervous.
In contrast, Linode does not have so many cool features, but their support is there and very responsive.
You can just bump up to AWS's $50 paid support as-needed for one month, if you need to. They've been very responsive to us with the three cases we've opened - roughly an hour to resolution each time.
I still wish this could have been factored into your hourly AWS costs rather than as a monthly fee. Say, pay extra 10% for every EC2 instance-hour or something and get it included (without the $100 minimum as in the business support that is).
It wouldn't be sustainable. The folks trying to build the next Amazon.com on a t1.micro would be paying a buck a month and expecting the same level of support Netflix gets.
Yep, you're right. I guess support is one of those aspects that can't be measured per Gb, so there must be some kind of an entry cost. I do wonder how Linode manages to keep this manageable for them though.
In contrast, Linode ... but their support is there and very responsive.
People keep saying this but it simple isn't true. It is only responsive when everything is working fine and you have some OS/app level issue.
But watch what happens when their Fremont DC goes down. You will submit a ticket and not hear back for hours (if at all) all whilst your site is down. You're then forced to jump on IRC and listen to gossip about what is happening.
Linode's support is as good as their security. Smoke and mirrors.
What worries me the most with AWS, is that there's virtually no support. I guess you can pay and get decent support, but on the low-end of the scale, it's pretty thin or non-existent. Now, I don't hear of so many issues with AWS that warrant contacting support about, and I don't face any issues myself, but just the thought of something going strange and having nobody to talk to makes me nervous.
In contrast, Linode does not have so many cool features, but their support is there and very responsive.