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Comment by dataminded | Hacker News Reader

Pricing isn't an actual concern when you are just getting started. Why would you be worried about vendor-lock if you haven't built anything? If you run your entire solution on a server that you manage, you are also on the hook for backups, recovery, and every other problem that AWS already solved.

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Shouldn't pricing be the main concern? If you're just getting started I assume you have $0 revenue to spend.

Edit: unless you mean that you'll be within AWS free-tier for a while.

You’re burning way, way more in labor (and/or opportunity cost of your own time) than you are likely to spend on your monthly cloud (or co-lo) bill.

Anything that helps get you to MVP faster is a huge cost-saving.

You're right. My personal successes came from pecking away a few hours per week, keeping costs low (or free) and growing slowly over multiple years without the need to monetize early.

> Why would you be worried about vendor-lock if you haven't built anything?

When else would you worry about lock-in? The early stages of a project involve setting up the foundation. If you build your foundation on vendor-specific tech, you've just locked yourself in or signed yourself up for a very painful transition in the future

Worrying about lock-in after you've validated that the project will be successful enough to pay the costs is also an option. Basically, do you knowingly plan for a future cost that only happens if you are successful, or do you put in extra work now that may end up being wasted work if the project fails?

You worry about lock-in once you know that you have product-market fit and your current technology is inhibiting development or scale.

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