I agree that building your backend on Lambda is terrible for many reasons: slow starts, request / response size restrictions, limitations in "layer" sizes, etc.
RDS, however, I have found to be rock solid. What have you run into?
RDS, however, I have found to be rock solid. What have you run into?
I found RDS to be rock solid too, although performance issues are often resolved by developers by submitting a PR that bumps the instance size x2, because "why not". On baremetal it's often impossible to upgrade CPU just like that, so people have to fix performance issues elsewhere, which leads to better outcome at the end.
RDS is a good option if you want convenience and simplicity, though.
A mismanaged VPS is downtime and churn, a mismanaged DB will insta-kill your business if you have unrecoverable data loss. I would definitely use a managed solution until I can get a dedicated person to babysit the DB, but I would consider managing a VPS myself.