Certainly, using a cloud provider can be cheaper than purchasing your own hardware, or instrumental in moving a capital expense into an operating one. And there are impressive multi-core hyperscale servers that are now available to anyone for a reasonable monthly fee. But while it is great that cloud providers base their fees on what resources you actually consume, the various elements of your bill are daunting and complex, to say the least.
Separating pricing fact from fiction isn’t easy. For this article, we looked at five shopping comparison services, including Cloudorado, CloudHarmony’s CloudSquare, CloudSpectator, Datapipe and RightScale’s PlanForCloud.com. Some of them cover a lot of providers, some only focus on a few.