I prefer Digital Ocean, at least I know what it will cost, and working with the product is straightforward. Even huge company like the one I work for gets stressed out over bills when we do anything new with AWS (our budgeting process is scary too). At least they usually will help us out when things go wrong given how much dinero we give them.
> To Amazon's credit, they removed the bills from my account and gave me free hosting credits to make up for it. Their support was swift and professional.
Perhaps it sounds a bit odd, but in most business settings, I'd rather be paying double and have service like this than be paying half without that customer service.
Generous policies like these avoid headaches, and headaches are much more expensive than machines.
With a model like this- you're only getting your money's worth while you're regularly making mistakes. If everything is going smoothly, you're just paying double for no reason.
I dislike when the value proposition gets muddied like this.
* In the other case, I pay $250 per month, and have a 25% chance of having a workplace conflict. A workplace conflict can cost tens of thousands of dollars.