Some ways to test and use cloud computing for free for yourself-
- Windows Azure
- Amazon Ec2
- Google Storage
The folks at Microsoft Azure announced a 90 day free trial for it
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/free-trial/?campaign=freetrialcta
Get the Free Windows Azure platform trial
You can run a Small Windows Azure instance with a 1GB SQL Azure database for free for the first 90 days of your trial.
- Monthly Allocations
- Compute: 750 hours of a Small Compute Instance
- Storage: 20GB with 50k Storage transactions
- Data Transfers: 20GB out / Unlimited inbound data transfer
- Relational Database: 1G Web Edition SQL Azure database
- Access Control: 100,000 transactions
- Service Bus: 2 connections
- AppFabric Caching: 128MB cache**
- ** The Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service is provided at no charge for billing periods prior to August 1, 2011. Beginning on August 1, a single 128MB cache is included at no charge for the first 90 days. All other cache utilized will be charged at the standard rates.
* A Credit Card is required for sign-up. Any monthly usage in excess of the 90 day free trial amounts will be charged at the standard rates.
But I also liked the folks at https://appharbor.com/page/pricing
Pricing
Note: These are preliminary prices to give you an idea of what to expect. Feel free to weigh in with your opinion
Performance
Add more application instances to get additional concurrency and higher performance. If your application has more than one instance, we’ll distribute instances across multiple servers for redundancy.
| Instances | Price |
| First instance | FREE |
| Additional instances | $0.05 / hour |
Background jobs
Background jobs lets you handle deferred processing such as sending emails and computing daily reports.
| Workers | Price |
| Per worker | $0.05 / hour |
Databases
AppHarbor offers your choice of MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server databases. We offer databases on shared database servers and dedicated database servers for users requiring guaranteed performance.
| Plan | Size | Price |
| Shared Basic | 20 MB | FREE |
| Shared Extra | 10 GB | $10 / month |
If you need a dedicated database server, drop us a line at support@appharbor.com
Services included in price
- Git-enabled code deployment
- IO, data transfer
- Load balancing
- Git repository hosting
- Instant roll-back
- Unit tests run and checked
- Direct access to your database
- Custom domains
- Technical support
New AWS customers will be able to run a free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance for a year, while also leveraging a free usage tier for Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and AWS data transfer. AWS’s free usage tier can be used for anything you want to run in the cloud: launch new applications, test existing applications in the cloud, or simply gain hands-on experience with AWS.
Below are the highlights of AWS’s free usage tiers. All are available for one year (except Amazon SimpleDB, SQS, and SNS which are free indefinitely):
A valid credit card is required to sign up. See offer terms.
- 750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month
* - 750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer plus 15 GB data processing*
- 10 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage, plus 1 million I/Os, 1 GB of snapshot storage, 10,000 snapshot Get Requests and 1,000 snapshot Put Requests
* - 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Requests
* - 30 GB per of internet data transfer (15 GB of data transfer “in” and 15 GB of data transfer “out” across all services except Amazon CloudFront)
* - 25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage
** - 100,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service
** - 100,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service
** - 10 Amazon Cloudwatch metrics, 10 alarms, and 1,000,000 API requests
**
In addition to these services, the AWS Management Console is available at no charge to help you build and manage your application on AWS.
* These free tiers are only available to new AWS customers and are available for 12 months following your AWS sign-up date. When your free usage expires or if your application use exceeds the free usage tiers, you simply pay standard, pay-as-you-go service rates (see each service page for full pricing details). Restrictions apply; see offer terms for more details.
** These free tiers do not expire after 12 months and are available to both existing and new AWS customers indefinitely.
But again Jumpbox gives a juicier offer for WordPress Users
Deploy WordPress on EC2 in minutes.
This special promotion brought to you by JumpBox enables new Amazon Web Services (AWS) users to get started with their own WordPress instance running on AWS in minutes. EC2 instance usage fees will be waived for the first year*.
15GB EBS storage fees will apply.**
If you’re ready to take advantage of this deal you’ll need to have already set up your AWS account via the sign up formhere and activated the EC2 service on your account. Once you’ve done that simply click the green button below to get started.
Pricing & Plans
Free test-drive for 30 days.No credit card required.
Developer Plan |
Get 1 micro instance free for one year |
||
Google does give you cloud computing for free (apart from free nearly email,docs ,pictures storage)
http://code.google.com/apis/storage/docs/pricingandterms.html
Pricing & Usage Policies
Google Storage for Developers pricing is based on usage. Storage usage and bandwidth usage is calculated in gigabytes (GB), where 1 GB = 230 bytes.
Important: Google Storage for Developers requires billing information for all accounts before you can start using the service, even if you intend to stay within the free trial amount. To sign up for billing, sign in to the Google APIs console and click the Billing tab.
Free Trial Usage
Google Storage offers a free trial quota until December 31, 2011. This quota is only applicable to your first project that uses Google Storage and gives you free usage of resources within that project, up to:
- 5 GB of storage
- 25 GB of download data (20 GB to Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa; 5 GB to Asia-Pacific)
- 25 GB of upload data (20 GB to Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa; 5 GB to Asia-Pacific)
- 25,000 GET, HEAD requests
- 2,500 PUT, POST, LIST* requests
The free quota will be reflected on your invoice at the end of the billing period.
For enterprise customers Google Apps has a free version too but its only free for 30 days
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en-au/business/features.html
Get Google Apps for Business
Web-based office tools hosted by Google to streamline setup, minimise maintenance and reduce IT costs.
Pricing
| Flexible Plan | Annual Plan | |
| Contract | None | 1 year |
| Cost | USD $5 / user account / month | USD $50 / user account / year Save USD $10 / user / year |
| Payment frequency | monthly | monthly |
| User maximum | unlimited | unlimited |
Additional solutions
Governments, schools, non-profits and ISPs. Google Apps provides specific solutions to meet your organisations needs.
* The 99.9% uptime SLA for Google Apps is offered to organisations using Google Apps for Business, as described in the Google Apps for Business Terms of Service.
You don’t even need a credit card to try Google Apps for Business. (it runs on 3 million businesses !)It’s free for 30 days for up to 10 users – just fill out this quick form https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/premier/new3?hl=en-au to create your account.
DECISION STATS 