Ask HN: How far free IaaS products can take you?

started working on a startup project with a friend recently. Like most of the other startups, we are trying to get up and running with a minimal budget. However, we need IaaS like aws, GCM, Azure. However, whichever we end up using, we'll have to get most out of the free-tier offeings.

How far you went with your products with freely-offered IaaS /PaaS services? What's your realization on the experience(s)?