I'm looking for a storage service for a simple website (built with Vue) with browser games. The website will have a login system and will collect some basic information about users. It will also have a chat, so it needs to store messages. I would prefer a free solution for now, because the number of users and transferred data will be very small. I Was choosing between Amazon EC2 and Google Firebase even tho they aren't really in the same category. Any advice on that will be appreciated
Hi Michal,
Correct, AWS EC2 is not at all the same thing as Firebase. AWS EC2 is a server instance where you can run server code. Firebase is a suite of pre-built cloud services that help developers offload maintenance, development and speed up development.
In your situation, if you are looking for a free or low cost option, where you can integrate many of the different types of services you have mentioned (authentication, storage, chatting, etc), Firebase is your best bet for the lowest effort.
If you go with AWS, you will end up needing much more than just EC2 to build and run your backend. More over, you will have to learn AWS's console which isn't the greatest user experience.
Beware that Firebase has a tendency not to be very reliable compared to AWS.
Thanks a lot for your answer, I had some assumptions and I was mostly guessing but your answer really clarified things for me :)
If you are using only Vue.js, you could consider Amazon S3 for the static portion of your site and Amazon Lambda for the bits you need to store data (also in S3).
https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/projects/host-static-website/services-costs/ https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/WebsiteHosting.html
This setup would require more work on your side, but it can be WAY cheaper than EC2 instances: it can be from $0 to $3/month. If you use only AWS free tier, you can make a very nice app paying for nothing for the first year, at least.