I don't have answer to you question, just a few notes about another low cost proder - Hetzner: * They have RAID by default * They have private network included now (vSwitch)

Drawbacks from my expirience: * You have to monitor hardware by yourself (SMART, CPU and HDD temperature) and requests checks if you suspect hardware failure * Decreased flexibility (curretly Hetzner have limited cloud support, but it's very limited). Probably doesn't matter for most startups. * More manual work for administration (provided services are more low level)