API gateway + Lambda functions (in Python) + DynamoDB if I need to store data.<p>Pricing is completely linear with usage (and very low/free for low traffic) and I don’t have to worry about uptime or scalability.
cakePHP on EC2 + postgres on RDS is nice.
toss in some Redis caching and feed it traffic from a load balancer.
you can get a lot done with very little effort.