Ask HN: What is the best you have managed with a free or a cheap cloud service?

[hvaoc]

I have always wondered what one has done substantially using the benefit of free and cheap offerings from various cloud services.

Examples:

Using $5 Digital Ocean droplet to manage my own VPN / EMail server.

Share the cool tools/services that you managed to build for yourself. Only hobby or personal projects, not your startups.

[verdverm]

I opt to go for a more expensive (on sticker) cloud because I make up the difference in labor costs.

GCP is our first choice