As part of my foray in to the world of ASP.NET it's inevitable that I'd need to find a host. Until now I've been developing locally but the app is getting to the point where I need to demo it to the customer and so I need some hosting.

First thing I did was a Google for "ASP.NET hosting" but soon got over-whelmed by the choice and options. Then I remembered that the guy who gave me one-to-one training had mentioned using Amazon Web Services, so I thought I'd give that a shot.

No more than two hours in to my day and I'd set up an "instance" (server) with an elastic IP that I'd bound to my own DNS and can be reached at cloud.jakehowlett.com. To manage the server I just connect via the Remote Desktop Connection client.

Cost?

Strange as it might seem I've signed up to (and provided card details for) a service without knowing how much it will cost. Although they have a calculator to let you try and work this out I've just gone for the "suck it and see" approach for now. If the costs escalate higher than traditional hosting I'll consider moving.

Most importantly, as I understand it, I can just cancel the account and there's no minimum term. Or if I'm not using it I can shut the server down and pay some nominal figure for them to store the disk image.

Initial Impressions

Although I'm impressed so far with how easy it's been to get going, it's too early to say if I'll stick with it or if it will prove too expensive.

As it progresses I'll let you know what happens and anything else I learn. Anybody else had any good/bad experiences with it?