Running everything on two clouds doubles cost and halves velocity. The realistic play: Docker + Postgres + S3-compatible storage keep ~90% of your stack portable, business logic stays out of proprietary glue, and infrastructure as code makes the exit real instead of theoretical.
Most startup cloud bills hide 30–60% waste: oversized instances, zombie resources, unmanaged storage, and egress surprises. Here are the seven fixes we apply in cost audits, ordered by effort — most are done in a day each.
