For the first 12 months of all new AWS accounts, Amazon EC2 includes 750 hours of running Linux EC2 instances and 750 hours of running Windows EC2 instances, as long as the EC2 instance type is t2.micro.
Doing the math, 750 hours is just enough time to run a single EC2 instance for an entire 31-day month.
During the early days of a startup, much of your AWS usage is going to be used for development. Many development resources don’t need to be running 24/7 like production resources do. The end result is that you’re wasting your precious EC2 free tier on unused resources.
By scheduling your EC2 instances to stop, you can expand your EC2 free tier from 1 EC2 instance up to 3 EC2 instances.
A full week has 168 hours. Suppose you only need your EC2 instances 11 hours a day, Monday through Friday. In this case, you’re only using your EC2 instance for 55 hours each week. In this case, you’re using your EC2 instance for less than 33% of the time.
By stopping your EC2 instances at night, and restarting them in the morning, Monday through Friday, you will only consume 33% of your EC2 free tier. This gives you room to run 2 more free EC2 instances under the same pattern.
Skeddly can automate the process of stopping (and restarting) your EC2 instances for you. Not only that, you can start and stop 3 EC2 instances daily every month and stay in Skeddly’s own free tier.
So not only have you stretched your EC2 free tier 3x farther, but the service you use to achieve that is also free.
That’s good economics!
Schedule off-times for your EC2 instances today and stretch your EC2 free tier farther. Sign-up for our 30 day free trial or sign-in to your Skeddly account to get started.