I'm unhappy with AWS because the setup is too complicated for a small team

That’s a very common complaint. AWS is powerful, but for a small team it can feel like you’re paying a “complexity tax” just to get something simple running.

A few practical options:

• Use a simpler cloud platform:

  • DigitalOcean — straightforward, good for small teams, simple pricing
  • Render or Railway — very easy for web apps and APIs
  • Fly.io — great if you want deploy-anywhere style app hosting
  • Vercel — excellent for frontend and serverless-ish workflows

• Reduce AWS surface area if you want to stay there:

  • Use Lightsail instead of EC2 for simpler instances
  • Use Elastic Beanstalk or App Runner for less infrastructure management
  • Avoid multi-service architectures unless you truly need them

• Go managed where possible:
  Use managed databases, deployment platforms, and CI/CD so your team isn’t maintaining servers, networking, IAM, and scaling logic manually.

If you want, I can help you choose a better alternative based on:

1. what you’re building,
2. your team size,
3. your budget, and
4. whether you need compliance, scaling, or custom networking.