So...I run one service (gratis, as it's a friend) that gets about 8K uniques a day. It costs $26 a month in AWS (it was $35 but that's apparently gone down, cool!) and makes about $400/month. That price tag is despite me not being particularly cost-conscious when rolling it out. It does use free tier AWS resources, but EC2 is not in free tier right now; we're talking about keeping DynamoDB at free tier read levels and stuff like that.
And, unlike the still-really-weird-and-ad-hoc VPS world, stuff like DR is a solved problem when-not-if you need it. The vig for AWS is consistently between 20% and 25% and you are able to leverage implicitly all the incredibly useful tooling and systems around you. If 20% to 25% of $26 is going to materially damage your business, you do not have a business.
And, unlike the still-really-weird-and-ad-hoc VPS world, stuff like DR is a solved problem when-not-if you need it. The vig for AWS is consistently between 20% and 25% and you are able to leverage implicitly all the incredibly useful tooling and systems around you. If 20% to 25% of $26 is going to materially damage your business, you do not have a business.