I wiped out my prior sites and made a move to Amazon Web Services (AWS), consolidating hosting from GoDaddy, custom hosted WordPress, and also the commercial WordPress platform. The shift was surprisingly easy for most of my content and services, though shifting my email fully over is still in progress.
The first thing I noticed was the speed of service – the difference in being directly on the AWS platform vs the other hosting I had is exceptional, and well worth the time to move. Ping tests dropped from multiple seconds to sub 1 second across the board. The costs overall have dropped and the available services are certainly improved, though I now need to manage a bit more. The management is well worth the effort, as AWS makes it as frictionless as possible in most cases.
The interfaces and available services are well documented, and the controls clear. My main question is why I waited so long! We have moved to primarily AWS based infrastructure for work, but making the same move at home has been too long in coming. Next project is to start building on the micro services platform, to see what I can do there. We have already been working with these capabilities in our Research areas at Celgene, with our internal team building “serverless solutions” using these micro services.