Most of these platform have reached their critical mass to stay in business (and time to attract the customers like you) only because of the free tier. Sorry but even a low cost tier is too much for most wanting to give a try to a new infrastructure/stack. Most of these adoptions come from hobby projects trying it first and then recommending to use it in a professional setting. In a professional setting yes. you can afford to pay to low cost to evaluate it but you cant afford the time to do so. So they always rightly offer a trade of time to evaluate for the free cost. This is what actually brings the initial customers.