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We are building a website where the user will have the ability to upload word documents. We use Asp.net MVC, C# and Sqlserver. Our first thought was to go with VPS hosting and save the documents in the server.

But after looking at many Cloud hosting options, we are wondering whether it is cheaper/efficient to go with the cloud option to save the documents than VPS.

We are estimating around 400,000 users and each user can upload only one word document.

If anyone could show us the right direction we would really appreciate it !

Thanks !

user636525
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  • I would suggest to [see my answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/7245874/28004) regarding the same subject. Regarding hosting of all my static files, I always use [Amazon S3](http://aws.amazon.com/s3/) – balexandre Jun 01 '12 at 19:16
  • Is there any reason you think Amazon S3 is better than Azure Blob storage ? Thanks ! – user636525 Jun 06 '12 at 02:31
  • Yes, Amazon is in the market for way longer, Amazon has several of their products actually use all Amazon services, I started with Amazon and never look back. Windows Azure is still beta, only last year Microsoft started to build Microsoft Dynamics on top of it's own cloud service, and having a huge company offering Cloud Solutions where none of their products are on the cloud, is kind'a scary... and once again, since the start I used Amazon services (even that I'm a .NET developer and really like Microsoft) and never had problems, it's cheap, and all works out of the box. – balexandre Jun 06 '12 at 06:15

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we are wondering whether it is cheaper/efficient to go with the cloud option to save the documents than VPS.

Amazon S3 and Azure blob storage offer this kind of service, just check out their pricing under those links - it is very cheap. Also they offer public and protected access to uploaded documents through HTTP.

If anyone could show us the right direction we would really appreciate it !

Both Amazon S3 and Windows Azure support .NET and you can use them with your ASP.NET website so that is a matter of your taste.

Sergey Rybalkin
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  • Thank you so much ! I checked Azure Blob Storage and it looks promising !So are you suggesting we should still use the VPS hosting to host our webserver and use the Azure Blob storage to store our documents ? – user636525 Jun 01 '12 at 19:19
  • I haven't tried this approach but it is definitely possible. But of course it would be much easier to host your website using [Amazon EC2](http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/). You will still have the full control of the server OS, even remote desktop interface is available. – Sergey Rybalkin Jun 01 '12 at 20:38
  • Sorry to ask, are u saying Amazon EC2 for a webserver will be much cheaper than a VPS ? – user636525 Jun 01 '12 at 21:39
  • It depends on the computing power you need and I'm not sure which one is cheaper, but they are close. I have experience with both VPS hosting on Rackspace and EC2 - even if there is a difference it is really small. Check out their [pricing](http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/) – Sergey Rybalkin Jun 01 '12 at 21:50