Depends on which cloud you're talking about -- there is no "the" cloud.
But since you're talking primarily about web app hosting options, I've found AWS to be just fine, others seem to like rackspace or linode or whatever. Heroku has struck me as pricey, and if you're a web developer I feel like you should be capable of setting up a web server on linux on your own. EC2 and S3 are both just really convenient, I'm not sure of an option that's more convenient, and that's really what I'm looking for--convenience and one less thing to worry about.
So, the cloud (or several clouds, really) is right for my startup, but it may not be right for everyone. Still, EC2, S3, and AWS generally really are great products, if you're a startup, something like it probably is for you, at the very least until you've figured out what you're doing and are making something people are paying for.
But since you're talking primarily about web app hosting options, I've found AWS to be just fine, others seem to like rackspace or linode or whatever. Heroku has struck me as pricey, and if you're a web developer I feel like you should be capable of setting up a web server on linux on your own. EC2 and S3 are both just really convenient, I'm not sure of an option that's more convenient, and that's really what I'm looking for--convenience and one less thing to worry about.
So, the cloud (or several clouds, really) is right for my startup, but it may not be right for everyone. Still, EC2, S3, and AWS generally really are great products, if you're a startup, something like it probably is for you, at the very least until you've figured out what you're doing and are making something people are paying for.