[TheCowboy]

I agree and would add that it's easy to look at their spend and think that's a waste, but I think with many endeavors, an individual's time is usually the scarcest resource.

Web services expenses aren't even close to their cost of adding an additional employee to solve these problems in-house.

Learning to automate something a more seasoned *NIX veteran could do in an hour is not always a predictable time expense, and then they might create bugs or run into other issues. $100/month can a bargain and buy you time to do more important things.

Researching services to use can turn into a black hole. There is always a better service that you don't know about. It can be better to decide "I will spend one hour researching metrics/dashboard services, and pick the best one I find, and spend another testing out the service." rather than trying to end up with the most perfect solution and testing every solution there is.

That said, sometimes it's more time efficient to avoid having one extra service to maintain. One has to avoid using a service in a way that the business is too dependent on it, or that the service is not easily replaced. That's just part of what makes running a business hard.

[jeffmould]

That's a good point about individual's time being a resource. There are many things I am good at and there are many things I am not so good at. I would gladly pay a premium to a service to have them handle the things I am not good at, especially when just in the startup phase. So while one person may think that saving a buck here is an option, for me that buck may be the difference between being able to continue business, having to hire someone internally, or not having a business at all.

That's another good point about researching services can turn into a black hole. It is almost like the question of what framework/language should I use to build my startup.

[0xCMP]

Exactly, isn't that the reason why startups "need" so much money anyways? To get the best people to solve problems? In that case, it's a one off and you solve the issue. Definitely seems like the smarter business move to me too.