[methodover]

I converted a Linode setup to an AWS setup at my smallish-but-not-tiny startup ($100k MMR or so). It was pretty easy.

I'd go with the cheapest solution, like a digital ocean droplet before going to a more expensive (but more fully featured) solution. You can always switch later.

I took us to AWS to take advantage of things like Redshift, Aurora, etc. Prior to AWS, we just had our rdbms, redis, app servers on relatively inexpensive Linode boxes.