I don't think your comment hits like you think it does. I think your intent with "cheap" implies some level of being lesser. In my experience that is not the reality. Similar to opp I migrated a startup from 5x cost in AWS to DO years ago. In fact that "cheap" competitor was able to give them better performance, more reliability and more features for a lot less.

AWS is almost never required and almost never the best option. It's the Cisco of options, it's often the default but for no good reason other than someone on the team probably knows enough about AWS to make it work.

Almost every startup I've worked at has leveraged AWS as their primary but when not they end up using AWS for something. And in every startup there's always contention with AWS spend and all of these startups invest significant time and, funny enough money (via cost savings products or consulting), to reduce their AWS bill. And yet, they never seem to try anything else. Doomed to the cyclical cost savings cycle. Amazon knows this and the UI/UX is designed to keep companies in this money burning loop.

Finally, AWS isn't a silver bullet. For anyone in us-east-1, you know [0].

[0] https://mashable.com/article/amazon-web-services-outage-may-...