> If all you need is "good enough" reliability and basic compute power (which I think is good enough for many businesses, considering AWS isn't exactly outage free either), you're probably better off getting a server or renting one from a cheap cloud host.

This is exactly my point. Sorry if I was not clear on my OP.

We are using Seller API to get different product information, while their API provides base work for communicating with their endpoint, you'll have to implement your own system to use that, and handle the absurd unreliability of their API's rate limiter, and the spider web of API callbacks to get information that you require.

This costed around $10k. Which also includes work that is outside the reimplementation.

I do not know how much actually cost of the original application.

The app, that I was developing, was for another purpose, and the reimplementation was later added.

The app replaces an existing commercial app that is being used, which is $200+/m. So, may be 4/5 years to exceed the savings. They have been using the app for 3 years, I think.

And, maybe I am beating my drum a little, I believe my implementation works, and looks much better than the commercial or the first implementation.

So, I am really looking forward for this to success.

Sounds like we need a specialist.

I guess those promises about needing fewer expensive people never materialised.

tbh, aside from the really anaemic use-cases where everything actually manages to scale to zero and has very low load: I have genuinely never seen an AWS project (outside of free credits of course) that works out cheaper than what came before.

That's TCO from PNLs, not a "gut feeling". We have a decade of evidence now.

... you failed at reading comprehension?

My comment was not about using AWS is bad, it has its uses. My comment was about how in this instance it was simply not needed. And I even speculated when it might be needed.

To pick the correct tool for the job, is what, it means to be an Engineer, or a person with common sense. With experience, we can get over childish absolutions of a tool or service, and look at the broader aspects, unless, of course, we are expecting some kind of monetary gains.

Hetzner.

For most public cloud providers you have to give them your credit card number so they can charge an arbitrary amount.

For Hetzner, instead of CC#, you give a scan of your ID (of course you can attach your CC too or Paypal). Personally I do my payments via a bank transfer. I recently paid for the whole 2025 and 2026 for all my k8s clusters. It gives unimaginable peace of mind when compared to AWS/GCP/Azure.

Plus, their cloud instances often spin up much faster than EC2.

For bare metal I’ve been using tier.net to get 192 GB RAM, 4TB NVME and 32 cores for $219/mo.

Data centers all over the country and I get to locate under 10ms from my regional audience.

Just a data point if you want some bigger iron than a VM.

I have used Knownhost previously, it served me really well.

Before that, I used to go for Linode, but I think they've become more pricey?

Hetzner! They do ask for ID though.

You actually save on labour. A VPS is a lot less work than anything involving AWS console.