(OP here) I think that it's a fair point that hosting costs can often be a small part of the total cost of developing and operating an application. The only ex

(OP here) I think that it's a fair point that hosting costs can often be a small part of the total cost of developing and operating an application. The only extra thing I would add to that is that you can usually use boto with all of the other cloud providers. I believe one of the main aims of openstack (which I understand at least OVH runs) is to make code written against the AWS APIs portable. Totally agree that many of the proprietary parts of AWS function largely as billing footguns. However I have subsequently been told of AWS lightsail which is another, cheaper, way to buy what is effectively EC2. Strangely people around me rarely mention Lightsail - I suspect that many corporate users don't use it.