His previous blog post actually said that he moved away from the exact $5/mo digital ocean plan you're talking about, to this.

I think the author meant to do this less of a "play with fire" way but more of experimenting with new tech way. But yes, I agree that for personal sites, running with your own money, you probably want to stick with something safer like the $5/mo digital ocean box.

This is indeed the case, playing around with new tech. I've been a happy customer with DO for years but my own website was the ideal case to try out the whole serverless thing. As my website doesn't get much traffic so it'd cost me next to nothing. I do agree with most of the comments here though and the $5 DO box is the safest choice. I might have been a bit too excited with the new things and failed to think logically :)

"Oh, look, new tech. It shines! It heats! Ouch, it also burns!" The comparison to fire is quite fitting.

that depends for 5$ it breaks after a certain level of traffic. for many applications its always better to spend $$ instead of things shutting down. (hosting is usually insignificant compared to people, revenue etc)

If $180 is significant, then this person is probably a student or on a budget, not a business. So they'd probably prefer the downtime.

Oh come on. If this is a side project, it's likely impacting his personal monthly budget. A sudden, unplanned, $180 expense on a personal budget can EASILY be significant - even if you make six figures.

it's better to have an ability to cap $. With something like DO it'a way easier to control costs compared to AWS.