[nickpsecurity]

I think you're overstating it on mentioning alternatives. There's certainly factors that go into picking a particular provider that may justify the price or negate an alternative mentioned. So, I'm also against anyone mentioning them as a critique without context.

However, the flip side is that many services have alternatives that do about what they do. They might do so with a lower price or more capabilities. People mentioning those in comments of articles like this facilitates the discovery of those products for people not aware of them.

An example for me was arguing that much of what "cloud" stuff does can be done with dedicated hosting if it was setup correctly. That we just need a combo of the two to satisfy certain markets focused on security and dependability where sharing hardware isn't permitted but they want flexibility & low costs. Thanks to a commenter, I found out I had re-invented the concept of "bare metal hosting" and SoftLayer provided exactly what I was thinking about. I wouldn't have discovered that if everyone and I were just giving props to the OP or further elaborating their own use case.

So, I think exploring the reasons behind the choices of company in question and bringing up alternatives are beneficial. One facilitates understanding. One discovery.