Knowing I'd have to move fast as a startup, choosing easy to use tools was imperative.

One of the first stack decisions any startup makes is which server host to use.

For HostedMetrics, I chose DigitalOcean because it gets the job done with minimal fuss and frustration. It has just the right amount of choices, tweaking, and details to get a startup up and running.

So, why not @AWS? As a software engineer, my experience with AWS stretches for over a decade. During that time, I've never held a positive opinion of the user experience on their platform. Newly added products suffer the same problem too, surprisingly.