[anoojb]

I’ve found managed databases to be quite expensive at places like Azure and AWS. Especially compared to just installing pgsql on raw compute.

What managed databases do you recommend that adequately meet price/performance needs of indie developers?

[rlawson]

RDS - Aurora/Postgres flavor - small instance. Entire AWS bill was < $100/month to support 10k users - app load balancer

- WAF rules

- EC2 instance

- RDS

- Cloudfront

I use fargate when deploying now to get out of box management

[int0x2e]

PaaS and managed services let you trade money for time and effort - patch management, backups, security, config optimization, simplified scale-out/availability/etc. all take time, effort and skill to get right and keep running well over time. With RDS/Aurora/AzureSql/CosmosDb (and the like) you get to focus on your app/service/product instead. It all ends up being a question of how much your time (and being able to focus) are worth to you. If this is an actual business and not a hobby, and assuming market rates for your time - I believe the managed service offering ends up the cheaper option overall.

[mlboss]

Digital ocean also offers managed db(postgres/mysql) starting at $15/month

[robjan]

I've used ElephantSQL before. As long as you write efficient queries (especially avoiding N+1) and choose the right data centre it's usually reasonable for a small project.