This has been the case for over a decade. I've launched my first startup 11 years ago. I've used Linode and we've spent something like $20/month on hosting. (This has increased to around $80-$160 IIRC when we got funded, mostly due to the increased storage needs. We were a music startup and while S3 was pretty cheap back then too, it was easier to have everything on Linode at first. I.e. with enough funding, time was more expensive than storage.)

A bit more than a year later it went bust but I hoped I could still keep it alive, make it financially viable. I scaled back the infrastructure so costs would be below $30/mo again.