AWS Is the Default Answer. That Does Not Make It the Right First Answer.
When a small team asks what cloud platform to use, AWS is usually the first answer they hear. It is the default recommendation in developer circles, startup forums, and enterprise conversations. But default is not the same as right. For a lean team trying to launch an MVP, spin up a client environment, or build an internal tool, starting with AWS can add more surface area than progress.
That point matters because AWS is not a bad platform. It is one of the most capable infrastructure ecosystems in the world. The problem is that many teams do not need one of the most capable infrastructure ecosystems in the world on day one. They need a fast path to reliable compute, clear pricing, straightforward storage, basic networking, and a setup they can understand without turning infrastructure into a part-time job.
This question comes up often when we talk to builders evaluating Raff. They are not asking for two hundred services. They are usually asking for something much simpler: “Can I launch quickly, know what I am paying for, and stay in control as I grow?” That question shaped how we think about Raff from the beginning, and it is why I do not think small teams should start with AWS by default.
AWS Is Powerful — and That Is Exactly Why It Can Slow Small Teams Down
AWS earned its position by serving an enormous range of needs. If you need a giant catalog of managed services, deep enterprise integrations, or a global multi-region footprint, AWS is difficult to ignore. Even its own product lineup shows the split clearly: EC2 gives you broad flexibility with multiple pricing models and instance choices, while Lightsail offers a simpler bundled VPS-style path for narrower use cases. That breadth is a strength.
It is also where many small teams get slowed down.
A broad platform gives you more ways to design the “right” setup, but it also gives you more ways to overthink your first deployment. You are no longer deciding only whether you need a server. You are deciding how much flexibility to buy, how much abstraction to accept, how many services to wire together, and how much of your team’s attention should go into learning the platform itself.
For a mature platform team, that trade-off can make sense. For three developers trying to ship a product this month, it often does not.
This is the part that gets missed in a lot of cloud comparisons. The cost of starting on AWS is not only measured on the invoice. It is also measured in time, attention, onboarding friction, and the number of decisions you force a small team to make before they have validated what they are building.
The Real Cost Is Operational Attention
Most teams do not fail because they picked weak infrastructure. They fail because they burned time on the wrong complexity too early.
That is why I tend to look at cloud decisions through an operational-attention lens. What does the platform demand from your team before it starts returning value?
If your workload is a staging server, a lightweight API, a self-hosted tool, a WordPress site, a customer demo environment, or a short-lived development VM, you usually do not need your cloud platform to be impressive. You need it to be dependable and understandable.
A small team with no dedicated platform engineer should be very suspicious of any infrastructure choice that multiplies decisions before it multiplies output. Every extra layer may be reasonable in isolation. Together, they create cognitive drag. And cognitive drag is expensive because it shows up everywhere: slower launches, harder onboarding, slower troubleshooting, and more hesitation around experimentation.
That is one reason focused cloud platforms keep winning a place in the market. Even DigitalOcean’s recent explanation of why AWS feels complicated for developers makes the same core point: small teams can get overwhelmed when the platform assumes a higher level of specialization than they actually have. Raff was built with that reality in mind.
What We Intentionally Built Raff to Do Differently
We did not build Raff by asking, “How do we recreate a hyperscaler’s service catalog?” We built it by asking a much more practical question: “What does a small team actually need first?”
That led us to a narrower, more deliberate product shape. Instead of asking users to navigate a sprawling platform before they can do useful work, we focus on the infrastructure primitives most teams reach for at the beginning:
- Virtual machines they can understand and launch quickly
- Fast local storage built on NVMe SSDs
- AMD EPYC-based compute
- Snapshots and backups when they need protection
- Private networking and firewall controls when they need isolation
- One-click apps and a web console when they want speed over ceremony
That is a product decision, not an accident.
We have no interest in forcing a small team to feel “enterprise-ready” before they are actually ready. In practice, the better starting point for many builders is a platform that helps them launch fast, keep the mental model simple, and expand only when the workload proves it deserves more complexity.
That is also why our platform story is easier to explain. If you want a cloud VM, you can start there. If you need block storage, private networking, backups, or application templates, you can add those when the need is real. You do not have to buy into a giant platform philosophy just to get a machine online.
The Right Starting Point Depends on the Workload
Here is where I think Raff makes the strongest case.
If you are doing any of the following, AWS is often more than you need on day one:
- Launching a new MVP with one or two services
- Running development, staging, or demo environments
- Hosting a CMS, a lightweight API, or a small SaaS backend
- Self-hosting tools like n8n, Docker-based apps, or internal dashboards
- Teaching cloud, Linux, or deployment workflows to students or junior developers
- Creating client environments where speed and clarity matter more than ecosystem breadth
In these cases, the goal is not to maximize optionality. The goal is to minimize friction while keeping the workload portable.
That last part matters. Starting on a simpler platform is not the same thing as painting yourself into a corner. In many cases, it is the opposite. A clean VM-based setup, straightforward networking, and ordinary deployment practices can be easier to move later than an architecture that depends deeply on a long chain of provider-specific services.
This is one of the most common mistakes I see in early infrastructure planning: teams optimize for theoretical future scale before they optimize for present-day speed and comprehension.
When AWS Is Still the Better Answer
There is no reason to pretend AWS is never the right choice. It absolutely is.
AWS is a strong fit when your team already knows the platform, when you need specialized managed services, when you have compliance or enterprise requirements that map directly to AWS tooling, or when your architecture depends on global regional reach from the beginning.
It also makes sense when infrastructure itself is part of your competitive advantage and you already have the operational maturity to handle the platform’s breadth. In that environment, AWS’s depth becomes a benefit rather than a burden.
So this is not an anti-AWS argument. It is an anti-defaulting-to-AWS argument.
Those are different positions. The first is ideological. The second is practical.
A Better Question Than “Which Cloud Is Best?”
Instead of asking which cloud is best, small teams should ask a more useful question:
What is the simplest infrastructure that lets us ship confidently this quarter?
That question changes the buying process.
If the answer is “We need a VM, clear pricing, room to resize, fast storage, backups, and basic private networking,” then a focused platform is usually the better first move.
If the answer is “We need a broad portfolio of managed services, enterprise policy controls, and deep service integration from day one,” AWS may be the correct choice.
The mistake is assuming those two answers are the same just because AWS is the most familiar name in the room.
Small teams do not need prestige in their infrastructure decisions. They need momentum.
And momentum usually comes from removing unnecessary decisions, not adding them.
What This Means for You
If your team is still deciding where to start, I would keep the rule simple: do not buy hyperscale complexity before your workload actually needs it.
Start with the infrastructure you can understand, operate, and afford with confidence. Keep the architecture portable. Let your real usage, not your anxiety, decide when you need more platform depth.
If that sounds closer to how your team works, start with a Raff VM, review the current pricing, and build from there. For practical next steps, our guide on Dev, Staging, and Production Environments in the Cloud is a good decision framework, and our Self-Host n8n with Docker on Ubuntu 24.04 tutorial shows what a fast, focused deployment path looks like in practice.
That is the core idea behind Raff. We are not trying to be everything on day one. We are trying to give small teams the part of the cloud they actually need — fast, simple, and reliable — so they can spend more time shipping and less time navigating infrastructure they never asked for.