[throwaway50182]

If you're just running VPS on the big clouds, you're not going to get much advantage out of it, indeed.

But tell me what third tier cheap provider has managed scale-to-zero-or-infinity functions? Managed storage with S3-like API? Where can I get an API gateway cheaper than Amazon? What about managed databases? These tools allow me to develop insanely scalable software incredibly easily.

Agreed - all the big clouds are very expensive VPS hostings. Don't use it for that.

[pleoxy]

You get portability. Which the functions do not provide. Open source solutions have a longer career utility than proprietary offerings. I remember when NetWare certs were all the rage. Useless now. I remember msce. But if you learned open tools 35 years ago instead... You get the picture.

You can scale from 1 thread 512MB RAM, to 500 threads and 12TB of RAM (off the shelf). Which is good enough for almost everyone who isn't planet scale.

Auto scaling also comes with auto billing. Oops, your accidental infinite loop spawning functions has bankrupted your company. You don't have that risk starting with a VPS.

[throwaway50182]

I agree completely, but the argument remains the same - there's not much utility in using the big clouds as VPS providers, and it's definitely costly to do so.

[pleoxy]

That part of true. Using EC2 at AWS now and it's much more expensive than vultr, Hetzner, or akamai cloud.

[jddj]

> Managed storage with S3-like API?

What's third tier here? Pretty much all of them offer S3 compatibility it's basically table stakes