FAQ

What is the cost of BitNami Cloud Hosting?

The monthly fee for BitNami Cloud Hosting depends on which plan you choose. You can view the currently available plans on the BitNami Cloud Hosting pricing page. We also offer a free developer plan, which allows you to run one Micro instance free of charge for one year (see the next FAQ for details on micro instances).

Note that the BitNami Cloud Hosting subscription fee is separate from the costs that you will incur from Amazon for running your servers and storing your backups. You can estimate the cost of running your servers on Amazon with our cloud cost calculator. You will receive a separate bill from Amazon for these charges, which will vary based on the number and type of servers launched and the storage and bandwidth consumed. Usage is billed by Amazon directly to your account and there are no additional surcharges of any kind by BitNami on top of Amazon pricing. Whenever you configure and launch a server through BitNami, the estimated monthly Amazon cost will be displayed for your convenience.

What is a micro instance?

A micro instance, or micro server, is a cloud server with 638 MB of RAM that allows for up to 2 Elastic Compute Units or ECUs. An ECU is the equivalent of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor. Micro instances are good for low throughput applications or development.

What is the Amazon Free Tier?

Amazon provides a free usage tier that allows you to run a micro instance for free and provides a fair amount of disk space and bandwidth usage. Combined with our free tier, it allows you to run your favorite open source applications on the cloud free of charge.

Do you provide refunds?

Please see our refund policy.

Can I launch more than 50 servers?

Yes, please contact us if you need to manage more than 50 simultaneous servers.

What if I go over the limits of my plan?

If you launch more or larger servers than your plan allows, you will be notified from within BitNami Cloud Hosting and asked to select a larger plan. Note that you can change plans as much as you would like during the month and your bill will be pro-rated accordingly.

What if I need to change my plan?

You can change your plan at any time through the BitNami Cloud Hosting user interface by clicking on the 'settings' link in the upper right hand corner. Your monthly bill will be pro-rated based on your time on each plan during the month.

What happens if I cancel my subscription?

Your access to BitNami Cloud Hosting will be deactivated and you will be unable to launch new servers or manage existing ones through BitNami. You will still be able to access your instances and storage directly from the Amazon Console or command line tools. We do not try to lock you in to BitNami Cloud Hosting - it is your servers and your data - we just make them significantly easier to manage :)

How is this different from using Amazon EC2 directly?

The applications! BitNami Cloud Hosting focuses on simplifying application deployment in the cloud. You can launch and configure the application of your choice with just a few clicks and without the need of in-depth technical knowledge. BitNami Cloud Hosting also adds a level of automation that makes it easier to manage your servers on an ongoing basis, such as backup and server scheduling and one-click server restores. We will continue to add application-level functionality while we leverage existing and upcoming Amazon Web Services features.

Which availability zones do you support?

BitNami Cloud Hosting supports all available regions on the Amazon Web Services cloud, including Europe, Japan and Singapore. Users who opt for regions closer to their physical location should experience decreased latency.

Do you plan to support other clouds?

Yes, support for Rackspace and Azure is on our roadmap. Please contact us if you are interested in using BitNami Cloud Hosting on another cloud, as this support will be driven by customer demand.

Do you provide support for the application themselves?

We do not provide commercial support for the applications themselves. You are welcome to post your question to the BitNami Answers or contact us for a referral to a solution provider with expertise in that application - we work with a number of vendors that may be able to help you.