It’s never been cheaper. It’s so much easier to scale. It’s never been cheaper. Well, maybe at a very low usage rate. But, at scale, it’s never been cheaper.

Buying server hardware is a lot more difficult and with more lead time than just buying a computer. Plus you then have to build your server infrastructure out in a data center. It takes a lot of time, and specific logistical skills. AWS is far easier to scale your services then doing it yourself, especially if you have extremely high peaks that you have to serve.

If AWS was cheaper then hosting, they wouldn’t make money.