Yes, features are important, and you don't want to waste your time doing stuff you can easily outsource. However, I think it's not about saving $2000 by outsour

Yes, features are important, and you don't want to waste your time doing stuff you can easily outsource. However, I think it's not about saving $2000 by outsourcing, it's really about understanding how your software runs. How each request is handled. How each layer and architecture affects scalability, performance and stability. One of the things we've seen in this Rails/Heroku example is that the platform can't really be completely transparent. If you treat it as some obscure service and don't understand how it fits together - you lose. You can't optimize, you can't scale, you can't give consistent experience to your users. I personally don't particularly like the distinction between devops and developers. I think all developers should have a good grasp of the platform. Of how pieces fit together. This is a worthwhile investment, not to save money on your PaaS, but to build a good solid app with good architecture. Performance, scalability and security are also features you should be shipping.