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Ask HN: How do you learn to use AWS when you are terrified to being overcharged?

8 points| noreasonw | 10 years ago

I don't get any money from programming, and I would like to learn to use AWS but I am a very risk averse kind of people and I don't want to be overcharge in case I do some silly thing in the web. I would like a service that guarantees that no matter what happens you don't pay more than a small amount for learning, I don't mind if my code disappear from the server or the application is no longer working when the money is over. I imagine that working in the cloud is about being at risk but, just in the learning phase I would like to have the minimum risk when learning. Any ideas?

17 comments

order

Turing_Machine|10 years ago

They have a "billing alerts" feature that should help. It will send you email if your charges exceed the amount you've set.

noreasonw|10 years ago

If you are hacked the first thing the bad guys do is to disable your billing alerts.

codegeek|10 years ago

do you want to learn AWS specifcally or do you want to learn to code stuff in general ?

If latter, may I suggest you try digitalocean then ? I know you are talking about AWS sepcifically but for your use case, get a $5 DO VPS and play as much as you want.

auganov|10 years ago

Get a CC that allows you to set a low spending limit.

gazarsgo|10 years ago

Open your account with a $100 Visa gift card.

noreasonw|10 years ago

Can I use an anonymous user?, that is I don't want to disclose my name, address, email or any other personal information

cpr|10 years ago

There are free micro instances, last I knew.

noreasonw|10 years ago

Unfortunately the word free is a little ambiguous since it can be free (as in beer) but suddenly you are charged because you make something stupid (or someone hacked your account and created a zillion services)

mindcrime|10 years ago

One thing AWS doesn't have, is a feature to let you forcibly terminate instances based on a billing limit or a time schedule. But, micro instances are so cheap (and even free for a time), that you can probably afford to set up a single micro instance, and put a watchdog process on there that will use the API to monitor your instances and terminate them if you forget and leave ones running or something.