ChoosingaCloudProviderasaStartup:WhatActuallyMattersEarlyOn

Choosing between major cloud providers based on marginal pricing differences at enterprise scale is largely irrelevant when your actual usage is small — the difference in your monthly bill at MVP scale is negligible regardless of which major provider you pick. Similarly, deep multi-cloud strategies, designed to avoid vendor lock-in, are solving a problem that doesn't meaningfully exist yet for a pre-scale product.

Getting into the theoretical "best" provider debate at the expense of shipping speed is time better spent elsewhere — several mainstream providers can run your MVP well.

Ease of deployment and iteration speed matters a lot early on — platforms like Vercel (for Next.js apps specifically) offer genuinely fast, low-friction deployment that lets a small team ship changes quickly without managing infrastructure directly. For more general infrastructure needs, AWS remains a mature, broadly-supported default with deep documentation and a large talent pool familiar with it.

Cost predictability at your actual (small) scale matters more than theoretical cost at a scale you haven't reached — understand your provider's free tier and early pricing tiers clearly, since unexpected infrastructure bills are a real, avoidable early-stage risk.

For a Next.js-based product, Vercel plus a managed database is a common, low-friction starting point. For broader infrastructure needs, AWS with Docker-based deployment is a mature, well-supported default. In either case, pick a mainstream option your developer is genuinely experienced with over a theoretically superior option neither of you has used in production — familiarity reduces real operational risk at this stage.