Yet with a Docker Swarm setup, you could get away with probably 10 dollars/month. K8s likely taking more resources than your app containers is why k8s may not be the best option for single node deployments.
I've personally tried both orchestration options and much prefer Swarm to smaller deployments. Sure k8s could prepare you better for the future if your app takes off to the moon but that's just premature optimization.
This might all very well be true, but Swarm doesn’t let you connect cloud disks directly to your containers, to my knowledge.
Also I challenge the $10 because what cloud instances plus ancillary services add up to $10? I’m talking 2 CPUs and 7.5gb RAM.
It does. Check out Docker volume plugins like:
https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-aws/persistent-data-volum...
https://github.com/thecodeteam/rexray
But I stress it's not about the scaling. It's about the features even at a single node. I wouldn't be spending time writing this stuff had it not been revelatory for me.
PS. If you're not able to try it on GKE, there's also https://github.com/kubernetes/kops. GKE is great for trying, at least, though. Just get a cluster running and get rolling with the concepts. Then you'll know what it's all about. There isn't that much to it, and what there is to it is great and well documented with a great community.