$1300/month w/ a 3 year commitment is $46.8k over the lifespan. Which is more then 4x more then the actual hardware cost. Your ROI on a physical server with the same stats at that price tag would be 8 months.
Not saying its totally worth it, but the upside is that they take care of power costs, physical space costs, networking, and if the hardware fails they'll put your application on a new server. Basically you take all of the risk out the equation.
Sure, but add power and cooling for these things plus physical space? (I remember when these big db's needed the floors in the data centre reinforcing since they were a > metric ton )
Still, I agree re. the difference in price. I'd buy too
