[vonklaus]

I used to say "but we could just build that", but I agree with you.

Some of the things I find expensive are te SSL line items and more peculiar than expensive really, a $25 image carousel.

If letsencrypt could be a drop in replacement for te SSL spend it would save them some money.

Other than that, I don't use Heroku, but not wanted to manage a db is pretty reasonable and the cost offset is likely there.

Sometimes these startups are 2 people. So the tech cycle would be hard enough, not to mention business and customer support.

[destroytoday]

For some insight, the $25 carousel was more about supporting the indie dev who built it. :) And sometimes the startup is 1 person, which Cushion currently is. I'm hoping to hire some dev help this year, though!

[sleepyhead]

How much time would it take to code a carousel? How long time does it take to look through the countless open source carousels? How likely is it that this $25 carousel is better than the free ones? Come on, it's peanuts if it's a good lib even though it's a fairly standard feature.

I would off course never use a carousel though.