Yeah I think you missed my point. When starting out, at the point where I am not worried about scale, which means I would be looking at Orchestra's "basic" package (that doesn't scale), I am having a hard time understanding why I should pay 3x more than I would rolling my own server at Rackspace Cloud.
When my app needs to start scaling up a lot (and that's often an "if" not a "when" for a lot of projects), then for sure I agree that a well-managed service backed by talented people is worth every penny.
Imagine a world where your application has enough traction that you're spending more of your time fixing issues or adding features to please/retain the maximum number of users.
Having been there, when that day comes, you won't be nickel-and-diming. You'll just want some rock-solid guys in your corner who allow you to worry about one less thing.