The 10 board minimum doesnt really apply with some places like BatchPCB.com, if youre willing to wait. Theres a 10$ minimum and $2.50 per sq in so for small simple boards its not that bad to pay something like $15 to avoid the hassle of wiring perf boards. I cant tell you how much I despise wiring perf boards or hand-etching my own pcbs! Yeah itll take a week to get through the learning curve of Eagle but once you know it, its like riding a bicycle. So I guess I would suggest if this is a one off thing that just needs to be done quickly, it's not too bad to wire up a single perf board. But if this is something you might be doing again in the future and you have the time, I would suggest looking into making your own pcbs.
-B
IMO, BatchPCB is a perfect example of why the 10 board minimum does count.
At BatchPCB, it's $10 + $2.50/square inch, so a board as small as an Arduino shield (about 2x3 inches) is $25. Add to that the time messing around with Eagle to create the file, and it's also a lot more work to go the PCB route. Why in the world wouldn't you just buy one of the fine protoboards on the market if you only need a few? It will take less time, be easier, and cost a whole lot less.
The only exception is, as I noted above, if you have special parts like surface mount.
Even then, at places like Olimex, you can get 4 shield-sized PCBs for not much more than that $25. And Olimex lets you choose your soldermask colour.
I really don't understand why people use batchPCB.