Too many developers these days are building infrastructure like they’re Netflix. Spinning up Lambda functions, API Gateway, Cognito, S3, DynamoDB, CloudFront—and for what? An MVP with zero users? A side project that hasn’t proven product-market fit?

It’s a pattern I’ve seen too often: indie devs, bootstrapped teams, even startup founders with a tight budget, wasting weeks wrestling with AWS configurations. IAM roles, Terraform scripts, complex permission models. All that effort poured into scalability—before anything exists that needs to scale.

This is how projects die before they ever launch.

When people say their project failed, it’s not because their container didn’t auto-scale fast enough. It’s because no one wanted the product. Or because they got overwhelmed and never shipped it. Or they burned out trying to architect a global platform for a few hundred beta users.

Most apps never reach the kind of scale that justifies a complex AWS setup. And if you do get there, great—you’ll have money, customers, and a reason to invest in more sophisticated infrastructure. But that’s a later problem.

At the start, your only job is to build something people want. That means fast iteration. Short feedback loops. Getting to production with as little friction as possible.

Here’s what a sane, scalable launch stack looks like in 2025:

• Ruby on Rails – A full-stack web framework that ships with all the batteries: authentication, background jobs, file uploads, WebSockets, caching, and more. You can go from idea to deployed product in hours, not months.

• AmericanCloud – A rock-solid, privacy-first cloud provider based in the U.S. that doesn’t nickel-and-dime you. Flat pricing, great support, and no nonsense. You get a real server you control, without the AWS complexity tax.

• Cloudflare – lightning fast DNS, DDoS protection, caching, and proxy for zero cost. 

• Kamal deploy – A dead-simple deployment tool that makes it easy to go from your laptop to production using Docker and SSH. Zero-downtime deploys. No Kubernetes. No third-party CI pipeline gymnastics.

That’s it. You don’t need Kubernetes. You don’t need to manage 15 AWS services. You don’t need a DevOps certification to launch a real product.

• You can ship fast.

• You own your infrastructure and can debug it without opening 10 dashboards.

• You can scale when needed, but you’re not paying for complexity you don’t need yet.

• You stay focused on product and user feedback, not cloud infrastructure.

This approach works. It’s how I ship apps. It’s how many successful bootstrapped businesses have launched. If your project takes off, you can optimize later. Move to multi-region. You’ll be doing it from a position of strength, not speculation.

Look, I do love AWS. There are valid reasons to use it:

• You’re working with compliance-heavy data (e.g., healthcare, government).

• Your company is deeply embedded in the AWS ecosystem.

• You’re building something that truly needs global scale on day one.

• You’re trying to learn AWS to get a job.

But that’s not most indie projects. That’s not most bootstrapped SaaS apps. And that’s not where you should start if your goal is to launch quickly and validate an idea.

The Rails + AmericanCloud setup is fast, powerful, and refreshingly simple. You can own the whole stack, understand how it works, and be in production this weekend. You don’t need a team of DevOps engineers or a dozen microservices just to get a button-click to save to the database.

Start small. Ship often. Talk to users. Get feedback. Iterate. If and when scale becomes a problem, that’s a good problem to have.

Contact me for help with your MVP startup needs.