We respect AWS — it's a great cloud platform. But if you're a UK-based business running predictable workloads on EC2, you're probably overpaying. Here's why.
AWS EC2 is priced for elasticity — you pay a premium for the ability to spin instances up and down. If your servers run 24/7 (most production workloads do), you're paying for flexibility you don't use. Hostingowy gives you dedicated KVM resources on our own hardware in European data centres at a fraction of the cost.
We compared equivalent configurations across both platforms. All prices in USD/month.
| Configuration | AWS EC2 (eu-west-2, on-demand) | Hostingowy | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB NVMe | $69.36 (t3.medium + gp3) | $25 | 64% |
| 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 160 GB NVMe | $138.72 (t3.large + gp3) | $50 | 64% |
| 8 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, 320 GB NVMe | $554.88 (t3.2xlarge + gp3) | $200 | 64% |
| 16 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB NVMe | $1,109.76 (m6i.4xlarge + gp3) | $500 | 55% |
| 32 vCPU, 128 GB RAM, 4 TB NVMe | $2,219.52 (m6i.8xlarge + gp3) | $1,200 | 46% |
Note: AWS prices exclude data transfer ($0.09/GB out), while Hostingowy includes generous transfer allowances. AWS 1-year reserved pricing reduces costs ~30% but still doesn't match our pricing.
We ran identical benchmarks on both platforms using Geekbench 6 and fio storage tests in the London region.
Hostingowy (AMD EPYC): 8,420 (8 vCPU) — dedicated cores, no noisy neighbours
AWS EC2 (t3.2xlarge): 6,190 (8 vCPU burst) — burst credits exhausted after 30 min at 100%
Winner: ✅ Hostingowy — 36% faster sustained performance
Hostingowy (NVMe, direct attached): 285,000 IOPS
AWS EC2 (gp3, 3000 IOPS baseline): 3,000 IOPS (16,000 burst)
Winner: ✅ Hostingowy — 95x more IOPS on baseline
Hostingowy (EU data centre, Poland): ~30ms from London — competitive with European hosts
AWS EC2 (London eu-west-2): 0.8ms within AZ
Winner: Trade-off. AWS wins on raw UK latency. Hostingowy wins on CPU, storage performance, and price — with excellent connectivity from Europe.
| Feature | AWS EC2 | Hostingowy |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated CPU Cores | ✗ (shared/burstable) | ✅ Dedicated KVM cores |
| NVMe Storage | gp3 (network, max 16K burst) | ✅ Direct-attached NVMe |
| UK Support (real humans) | ✗ Chat bot → ticket | ✅ UK engineers, < 2min response |
| Data Centre Location | eu-west-2 (London) | ✅ European data centres (Poland) |
| GDPR by Default | €0.01/GB data processing fee | ✅ Included, EU-based data |
| Free Migration | ✗ | ✅ Concierge migration included |
| Auto-scaling | ✅ Full auto-scaling | Planned (Q4 2026) |
| Managed WordPress | ✗ (manual setup) | ✅ 1-click deploy with Redis/CDN |
| Free SSL | ✅ (via ACM) | ✅ Auto Let's Encrypt |
| DDoS Protection | ✅ AWS Shield (extra $3K/mo) | ✅ Included (up to 1 Tbps) |
| Choose Hostingowy If... | Choose AWS If... |
|---|---|
| ✅ You run 24/7 production workloads | ✅ You need global multi-region deployment |
| ✅ Your data must stay in the UK | ✅ You use Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB extensively |
| ✅ You want predictable monthly bills | ✅ Variable workloads with frequent scaling |
| ✅ You care about raw CPU/IO performance | ✅ You need 50+ services from one provider |
| ✅ You want UK-based support with European infrastructure | ✅ You're already deep in the AWS ecosystem |
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