It makes total sense for a small team (whether a startup or in a large organization) to be on AWS rather than going the DIY route by renting VPS out of some datacenter and managing everything from patching to migration to troubleshooting. What most fail to realize is the fact that a complete AWS package comes at a much cheaper cost than all of the above tasks combined. It just requires one to use some smart infrastructure planning in order to keep the bills low by tuning most of the configurable services which AWS provides.