Depend how much VC funding/ hosting credit obtained [1][2], if bootstrapped and selfunded (money matter) then bare metal [3][4][5].<p>[1] <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/bizspark-startups/" rel="nofollow">https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/bizs...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/start-ups/" rel="nofollow">https://aws.amazon.com/start-ups/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.soyoustart.com/en/" rel="nofollow">https://www.soyoustart.com/en/</a><p>[4] <a href="https://www.hetzner.de/" rel="nofollow">https://www.hetzner.de/</a><p>[5] any other provider (softlayer,packet,...)
Just start with a VM or dedicated server until you have scale that matters. Focus on product.<p>If you want an early head start with something like containers, then Kubernetes is nice and 1.4 has some good features to make it easy to scale across clouds/on-prem/colo in the future.
Personally I'd make sure the various services were at least deployable as Docker containers. That way there's a lot of flexibility in switching providers, and makes it easier to deploy on prem later if/when you need to.<p>As for which platform? IMO the most important factor is which platforms the developer(s) are most comfortable/familiar with. The last thing a new SaaS startup needs is to waste time while the engineers figure out a new platform they've never used... Doesn't really matter how easy or cheap it is to deploy if there's no product ready to deploy ;)
Currently debating between OVH, Online.net, and Hetzner.<p>Hetzner is cheapest but the other two have private networking.<p>If I didn't care about cost I would just use AWS or Google.