Amazon Lightsail vs. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Lightsail
Score 5.3 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) designed to present an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan.
$3.50
per month
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) lets users provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where they can launch AWS resources in a virtual network. Users have control over the virtual networking environment, including selection of one's IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways. Users can use both IPv4 and IPv6 in the VPC for secure and easy access to resources and applications.
$0
Hourly
Pricing
Amazon LightsailAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Editions & Modules
512 MB Linux
$3.50
per month
1 GB Linux
$5.00
per month
2 GB Linux
$10.00
per month
IP Address Manager (IPAM)
$0.00027 per active IP address managed by IPAM
Hourly
Traffic Monitoring
$0.015 per ENI ($/hour)
Hourly
NAT Gateway
$0.045 per NAT gateway
Hourly
Standard
Free
Hourly
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon LightsailAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for creating and using an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) itself, you can pay for optional VPC capabilities with usage-based charges. AWS provides features and services that give you the ability to customize control, connectivity, monitoring, and security for your Amazon VPC.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon LightsailAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Considered Both Products
Amazon Lightsail
Chose Amazon Lightsail
The only reason to shift from liquid web to Amazon Lightsail is the cost. Amazon Lightsail's cost is very low as compared to liquid web.
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is ideal for beginners looking for a low-cost VPS to try out new things. It's especially useful if you're at a hackathon and need a quick way to prototype a quick idea. I would never recommend Lightsail for any kind of production work. In terms of uptime, …
Chose Amazon Lightsail
I believe Lightsail has worse support than DigitalOcean and the pay more for better service model is not great as most customers are trying it for the first time. They are both very fast to set up and get started, but we went with AWS Lightsail because we were familiar with …
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Linode and Digital Ocean are far more reliable than Amazon Lightsail. I would recommend against hosting any production applications in Lightsail. Even for prototyping, I would also suggest using the VPS provider of your choice for your production application because you can …
Chose Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality …
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Chose Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
We utilize both AWS and Azure resources for our cloud deployments. The deployment of resources initially was smoother through AWS VPC due to their powerful CLI and Powershell cmdlets. In the past couple of years, the differences between some of the features of AWS VPC and Azure …
Features
Amazon LightsailAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
9.1
Ratings
12% above category average
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
8.0
Ratings
1% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.90 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates9.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Operating system support9.60 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Security controls8.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Automation9.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
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Amazon LightsailAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
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Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
Amazon LightsailAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.8
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon LightsailAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best suited for the small applications which do not need much CPU powers to executes tasks and when integration with other AWS services but it is less suited for the applications which need very frequent auto scaling for the performance purpose, as AWS Lightsail did not support system downgrading so not recommend to use in this case.
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Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is well suited for Early-stage IT-based startups company & Corporate highly cloud scaling-based software [companies].
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Pros
  • Value instances packages
  • Better organized UI
  • Easy billing resulting in higher efficiency
  • Cheaper than competition
  • Better support staff
  • Can adjust for any bills you may have incurred by accident
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  • Pricing model & On demand service commitment.
  • Well, architectural infrastructure development processing before spending the money.
  • AWS VPC are providing hassle-free using with all others services from AWS very easily.
  • AWS business support is very helpful & [gives] the right direction according to client’s situations.
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Cons
  • Lack of flexibility in terms of configuration
  • Customer service tiers - have to pay more for better service
  • Usage not shown in obvious place
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  • The biggest issue with VPC networks is knowing how you can leverage VPC endpoints to ensure your resources within the VPC are not reaching out over the Internet to get to AWS services such as S3 and others.
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Usability
My overall experience with Amazon Lightsail is very good, and the online community of Lightsail users is very large and its helps to resolve any kind of issue i faced on my server. I also like the integration of other AWS services with Amazon Lightsail like we can export our Lightsail instance into ec2 server using snapshots.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon Lightsail is ideal for beginners looking for a low-cost VPS to try out new things. It's especially useful if you're at a hackathon and need a quick way to prototype a quick idea. I would never recommend Lightsail for any kind of production work. In terms of uptime, Lightsail has proved unreliable. Occasionally, the instance will simply crash or reboot at random. Without warning, Amazon will perform maintenance on your Lightsail instance. Lightsail's networking is likewise lacking, with no support for IPv6.
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We utilize both AWS and Azure resources for our cloud deployments. The deployment of resources initially was smoother through AWS VPC due to their powerful CLI and Powershell cmdlets. In the past couple of years, the differences between some of the features of AWS VPC and Azure Vnet have diminished. However, the ease of putting things together in a logical flow still belongs in my opinion to AWS.
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Return on Investment
  • Hosting a production application on Lightsail will guarantee you a loss
  • Saved lots of time for our prototyping
  • Other VPS providers are better
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  • AWS VPCs are actively used for following various compliance and regulatory needs such as network separation for PCI DSS. The ability to keep resources and access to those resources controlled through the initial steps of creating VPCs has helped tremendously.
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ScreenShots