Please help us decide: AWS Lightsail, or Google Cloud Platform or some other host?

[Simpleman]

Hello Experts,

We are launching (under development) a network of polling sites where:

1. Each site has separate C-Panel account and unique/separate domain name.
2. Each site is about 240 MB size (160MB in C-Panel act and about 80 MB in MySQL Database)
3. Each site will have “Exact Same” design/functionality, the only thing different is the domain name (domain1.com, domain2.com, etc) and polling question on the site. Users can also add posts on these sites based on the topic/domain of the site.
4. At this time, sites do not get any traffic and are under development.
5. About 400 sites are developed and rest are being copied/developed to different domain names.
6. Eventually, there will be a total of 4000 sites in the entire network.
7. It may take another 4 months to finish developing all the sites.


Problem: We had a server plan Cloud VPS with 8GB memory and 200GB SSD disk and we are beginning to get server performance issues. We hardly use any bandwidth because there isn’t much traffic at this time. The current hosting company doesn’t have upgrade available to next level plan.

It is suggested to us that we eventually need the following server resources for this 4000 site network:

Min Total Disc Space needed = 2TB
Preferred Disc Space needed = 3TB
Min Back Up Space (Offsite) needed at this time = 2TB
Preferred Back Up Space (Offsite) needed eventually = 3TB
Min Memory needed at this time = 48 GB
Preferred Memory needed = 64 GB
Min CPU cores needed at this time = 8
Preferred CPU cores needed eventually = 12 to 16 or higher
Min Bandwidth needed at this time (not much traffic right now but 400 sites are online) = 2TB (but higher later)

Note: Looking for an affordable host/platform where we can easily upgrade/downgrade services.

I need help with the following please (apologize for too many questions):

1. Is the above sufficient for our needs?
2. Where can we get these server/hosting specs, storage, and back up etc affordably? Budget is tight J
3. Which host is easy for us to manage because we are not technically oriented even though we can ask for help from our developer but developer only knows C-Panel simple server hosting like we have now. He doesn’t have experience with AWS Lightsail or GCP etc?
4. Do mega companies like GCP or AWS lightsail help set up the hosting account or do we need to do it on own?
5. Do AWS lightsail or GCP allow unlimited domains in the single account (because we need to host 4200)?
6. Is it easy and fast to set up DNS for this many domains in AWS lightsail or GCP?
7. Can you move WHM/C-Panel based account to AWS lightsail or GCP?
8. Currently sites use WHM/C-Panel with CentOS7. Do we again need WHM/CPanel and CentOS? Or should we use some other OS and Control panel for ease or use and to cut cost?
9. Will AWS or GCP tech support help us move/setup the DNS/account?
10. Can we configure a plan that matches our needs above at AWS lightsail or GCP?
11. How much cost are we looking at per month and per year?
12. Are there any step by step tutorials/videos available to setup/configure such a plan (think for dummiesJ ) at AWS lightsail or GCP?
13. What is a managed database? Do we need managed databases?
14. Since we will eventually have 4000 sites in the network, does it mean we need 4200 managed databases?
15. How much additional monthly and yearly cost are we looking at for managed databases (in needed)?
16. What is our best option with respect to ease of setup and use and cost wise?

Please help us guide in right direction.

Thank you very much for your help.