What's a good alternative in the US? I've been wanting to get into electronics and microcontrollers as a hobby. I have a old Arduino Uno that I got for free from some conference but I have none of the other stuff I would need to actually make something. I thought about getting a Raspberry since I found the Arduino to have very little RAM.
I'm in a pretty similar place a few months along (programmer getting into hobby electronics).
I mostly buy from DigiKey. They have a very wide selection of professional stuff, and they also resell adadruit and other similar hobby stuff (I think adadruit is a great company that makes great products personally).
You're not going to find a raspberry pi anywhere except from a scalper (~2x MSRP) for at least a few months, though. See https://rpilocator.com/?country=US .
I started off with rpi, but quickly realized I preferred not having a whole OS to manage. All my projects are now using adadruit boards, mostly feather nrf52840 ($20, Bluetooth low energy, great rust or circuitpython support).
High shipping cost? They pass along the cost of your choice of USPS, FedEx, UPS. You're not going to find anything better unless you buy on Amazon, which has a much bigger counterfeit problem.
That's a good point. I didn't imagine anyone would buy from adadruit internationally because that'd be crazy. They have distributors around the world: https://www.adafruit.com/distributors
I strongly considered purchasing my Raspberry pis from them, but I was put off by high shipping cost.