not at the price point that RDS is at. the starting cost of a multi - az deployment is lower. For a startup thats just starting out, it is the best and safest choice. Even heroku, but im not very sure about its reliability versus rds.

Please note what im paying for is availability and reliability.. not for a database per se.

And im not even talking Aurora. That stuff is going to blow every other price point out of the water at probably higher reliability metrics.