They are monstrosities because they stopped keeping it simple. A board is not a cms. You dunno need any fronpages, blogs for users, galleries. Is there any simple board software left?
Uruguay is a good location for someone that has friends and family in Brazil or Argentinia. Brazil is too expensive for hosting. I need a 128MB RAM box for blog and photo gallery with some traffic (10-50GB). No need for Florida if Uruguay would get a low end host.
They use newrelic because they don't want to spend time. If you want to monitor the system you need root. If you want to monitor only a web app you do not need root access.
It depends on your view of the company if you trust them or not.
You don't need a client config. Openvpn runs fine on the console
openvpn --remote SERVER_IP --dev tun1 --ifconfig 10.10.10.2 10.10.10.1 --ca ~/keys/ca.crt --cert ~/keys/client.crt --key ~/keys/client.key --reneg-sec 60 --verb 5
This can only work if you do not have many competitors in the same location. What should a newcomer offer in L.A. which the allready settled providers there are not able to offer? The newcomer can only adjust the price and will fail shortly after.