You don't gotta justify yourself. I don't really care why it's slow nor why you made the choices you made. And that's the point I was making: _neither will anyone else_. "It works on my machine" doesn't cut it when people are trying to determine if your stuff is worth the monumental risk.

I saw us-east and assumed it was us-east-1 but it doesn't matter. The same criticism applies to any hosting situation. You _could_ have gone with a cheaper DIY solution but didn't.