This looks perfect for a project I've been planning for a while, but the way the pricing works seems dangerous to base a small company on. They're pricing it per minute per core (even if idle), as if it's a service - except that they're not providing the service, I am. I'd much rather pay a flat fee than never know how much I'll have to pay.
If they want to charge for use, fine, charge ACTIVE time, not UPtime. Running a single dual-core EC2 instance should be no different than running a 10-core dedicated server at 20% load.
This has been our first approximation to pricing, and I agree with you, it has its shortcomings. We are aware of it and recognize it's not the ideal method of charging users.
Changes on the pricing are on the table now, we'll keep studying different options and change if something makes more sense than what we have right now.
If they want to charge for use, fine, charge ACTIVE time, not UPtime. Running a single dual-core EC2 instance should be no different than running a 10-core dedicated server at 20% load.