> One thing we noticed is that there's an increasing number of startups who start on a PaaS like Heroku and end up migrating to k8s later as their applications “grow out” of Heroku, due to constraints in networking, performance, security, etc.
They seem to be particularly targetting users who are migrating off of Heroku (and are migrating to 'their own' Kubernetes) due to cost, at which point $72/m is likely a tiny drop in the bucket.
Second, I agree with you that the EKS pricing is extremely restrictive for small projects, and especially for projects that require multiple clusters. But that is kind of a gripe at AWS and their Kubernetes offering, rather than Porter. They appear to support other Kubernetes cloud offerings, so just use DigitalOcean's (DOKS) if you don't want to pay for your control plane.
As an early stage founder, my time would be way more valuable than $70/month. I need to do as many (practical) things as I can to focus on delivering the unique value of my product.
However, the underlying EC2 machines added to the $72/mo management fee on EKS is relatively cheap, and we've found that if you are using more than 4GB RAM/4 CPU on Heroku, the cost on EKS starts getting cheaper than Heroku (at scale, using EKS is substantially cheaper than Heroku). That said, we are actively working on partnering with independent cloud providers with cheaper k8s offering for those who are running small projects. At the moment the cheapest option is to use Digital Ocean with Porter, which can be as cheap as $35/mo. With regards to Qovery, AFAIK, Qovery also runs EKS and does not yet have the option to use cheaper cloud providers like Digital Ocean.