Hey Zeni. That's actually something I was looking into myself as well. I would have been happy to receive free credits for AWS but I assumed I would need to own a company in order to qualify for that. I on the other hand literally just sat down and started working. In any case, thanks for the feedback and if you have any other ideas, feel free to let me know.
The author would have also saved a lot of costs if he had enrolled in one of those startup programs.
Some of the ones that are great include - YC's own startup program where you get links to deals - Segments startup program.
Both of these give access to $5K in aws credit last time I checked. Plus it has free usage for twilio and stripe. First 5K ins tripe billing is free.