AWS is an inherently complex product. It has far and away more features than any other competitor, so there is obviously going to be more confusion. I think the AWS dashboard is getting better and better and relatively easy to use if you keep each product isolated. There being 40+ products to choose from is overwhelming if you don't know what you are looking at, but that is the nature of the beast.

Why fear a complicated cloud? I tried DO. It was cute, then I kept using AWS. DO is very simple, for simple things. But where do I get my GPU optimized Droplet, or one with 10GB internet connection and 244GB of ram to computer that graph problem with 3B edges? DO's only got relatively small, simple instances.

Further, DO is MORE expensive than AWS. What you say? Well right now I can grab a spot request for a box with 8 cores and 30GB ram for $0.066/hr or $48/mo compared to $160/mo on DO. That's ~1/4 the cost. Also, most "AWS Sucks" benchmarks are naive at best, failing to use the local disk, rather than the NAS, and this only requires 3 bash lines to mount.