> using AWS is fine, as long as you use cloud agnostic stuff and avoid AWS specific services IMO this is exactly when you should not be using AWS. AWS is a pre

> using AWS is fine, as long as you use cloud agnostic stuff and avoid AWS specific services IMO this is exactly when you should not be using AWS. AWS is a premium offering and you can find cheaper alternatives for the commoditized offerings like EC2, RDS (the older, non-AWS-specific features) and (maybe) S3. It's the high-level services where the real value is in AWS - the cutting edge technologies that only exist in a specific cloud (or multiple clouds but where it's difficult to port across clouds due to subtle differences). This is where the extremely high development cost is able to be amortized over many customers, allowing you to get scalable, easy-to-use, and easy-to-operate services at a much lower cost than would be possible outside of that cloud. A great example of that for AWS is Serverless Aurora.