I have been testing out GoGrid as a possible replacement for Amazon EC2. These are my findings as well as suggestions. I feel they have a decent product but there is some Gotha’s that you should be aware of.

I have been using Amazon EC2 for a replacement for Dedicated Hosting. I am currently just using a small instance that cost 0.125 $ an hour but this still adds up pretty quickly. Things to be aware of when choosing Amazon.

Amazon Calculator : http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html 

GoGird also has pricing that can become a pain if you are not careful. 

Amazon Compute Unit = 1 EC2 Compute Unit is equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor

• Cost Per a Day, Just Keeping it Running
  • Amazon = 3$ a Day
    • for Small Instance 0.125 X 24 = 3$ a Day
      • SPECS
        • 1.7 GB memory
        • 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit)
        • 160GB Virtual Storage Will be lost unless bundled
        • http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
    • You can Bundle it into a Snap shot of the server at Any time and Re-Launch it, you cannot do this with GoGrid
  • GoGrid = $1.92 to $3.84
    • For 1GB $0.08/hr * 24 = $1.92
    • For 2GB $0.16/hr * 24 = $3.84
    • Specs
      • Windows 2003 Server w/ 1 GB RAM, 1 x Xeon Core 3.0 GHz, 60 GB storage
• Elastic IP, a Static IP Address, if it is not connected to a server, it cost $0.01 an Hour; if you use it you are fine.
  • Amazon you could end up with some cost if you do not use the IP Address
  • GoGrid Gives you 10 Public IP Addresses
• Bandwidth Cost
  • Transfer Into Service
    • $0.10 All Data Into Amazon
    • Free Into GoGrid
  • Transfer Out of Service
    • Both 0.17$ a GB
• Storage
  • Both at 0.15$ GB
    • GoGrid Gives you the first 10Gb Free of Charge
    • Amazon has Extra Fee's for Queries ... I have found these to be very Small in Cost in the order of < $0.25 a Month
• DNS
  • GoGrid Offers DNS Service, I still need to test it out. Realistically you should have your DNS hosted Elsewhere it provides better redundancy and fail safes. 

Other Notes

Amazon Offers the Ability to snap shot a Hard Drive or Entire instance at that moment in time, but GoGrid does not. This is a considerable downfall for GoGrid. If the Instance ever stops you have to reinstall and configure it from scratch. Also shutting it down during slow times would be much harder if not impossible with GoGrid.

• It might be possible to use Windows Backup to Backup the Server State and Restore it, this is something I will test.

GoGrid Currently is not supporting the Higher Level servers yet.  They are limited to 2GB Ram Max. They are also only supporting Single Core Servers.

 http://www.gogrid.com/how-it-works/technical-specifications.php

A couple other Things that I found a show stopper are,

MS SQL has Licensing Fees per a Month

• $99.99 a Month for MS SQL Workgroup
• $249.99 a Month for MS SQL Standard
• http://www.gogrid.com/how-it-works/server-images.php

All in all you could save a little cash with GoGrid but just beware of the differences. Cloud Computing is still a much better alternative to dedicated servers.