Startups and solo developers are often faced with the same challenge: how to build robust, scalable systems without draining their limited resources. Traditional cloud services offer power, but can be overkill — both in terms of complexity and cost. This is where serverless technology shines. In this post, we’ll look at how combining the Serverless Framework, AWS Lambda, and DynamoDB creates a lean, efficient stack. We’ll also examine why Aurora Serverless (particularly v2) may not be the best fit for budget-conscious builders, and when a cheap VPS still makes sense for relational workloads.