[benjaminwootton]

Remember Heroku have to support millions of users on the free tier on a permanent basis, all of which costs very real cash money compared to your average freemium web business.

AWS only have a temporary free usage tier so collect money right up front even on the smallest projects.

For that reason, these relatively large step functions in pricing at the low end are reasonable from where I'm sitting.

[xiaoma]

It sounds like you're agreeing with the OP.

Heroku is a great deal for people just starting out, somewhat at the expense of those who have already grown larger. His strategy seems sound-- use Heroku at the beginning, then if and when it gets unjustifiably expensive, switch to AWS.