> means cost wise it's cheaper just to spin up a 'real' database droplet.

This is the case for literally every managed database service that I'm aware of.

You pay a premium for the managed aspect.

That's an entirely fair point, but frustrating that the connection limits are not clearer in the docs.

FWIW, if you’re using 75+ connections, it’s probably a good idea to add some kind of Postgres proxy in the middle like pgbouncer. Postgres doesn’t handle lots of connections well because each connection forks off its own full OS process, and the performance can degrade noticeably when you have too many connections to Postgres as a result.

That’s been my experience, at least.

And DO's hosted Postgres allows you to easily configure pgbouncer.

I'm very happy with the managed DB service. A few gotchas, but the service itself has been incredibly stable with 100% uptime from what I can tell.