Yes, I would pay an upfront cost but not a recurring monthly thing. For example, I have a LAMP project I want to run on a VPS and will only access the server o

Yes, I would pay an upfront cost but not a recurring monthly thing. For example, I have a LAMP project I want to run on a VPS and will only access the server over SSH. You could go in and rip out all the crap like FTP servers, mail servers, close unneeded ports and tune it for Apache+PHP and MySQL and I will pay $20-$40 for that. In 6 months, if my app has taken off I ask if you can update/patch/harden the machine again for $40-60.