There are many, many, options that are equivalent to an Uno, but smaller or cheaper or both.
(none of them, including ATtiny85, are sold by Arduino.cc - some are sold by nominal (former?) partner-like entities (Adafruit, Sparkfun, SeeedStudio), some are sold by people who do major support-like things on te forums or code-writing (PJRC, DrAzzy), some are derivatives of varying levels of credibility from China, and some are bare chips...
Sparkfun "Pro Mini" (and widely available clones)
Adafruit "Pro Trinket", "Metro Mini", "ItsyBitsy"
Arduino Nano and derivatives.
PJRC Teensy, Teensy LC
Atmega8, mega168, mega328 bare chips.
Assorted "new" attiny chips supported by ATTinyCore
I would avoid the Attiny85 - it is not much smaller, nor much cheaper, than many of the other solutions, and it's missing a lot of features. Bare ATmega8a chips are similar in price to ATtiny85, and are MUCH more "fully compatible."
I'm building a system requiring over 100 arduinos and want to find something that is cost effective and as bare bones as possible. A development board with the bare minimum. I thought of using a bare chip but don't want to spend time soldering components.
From my research this is what I came up with.
solarbotics ardweeny
sippino
If anybody knows any more to use I'm interested
I've also looked into trying to use the bare chip.
Does anybody have any idea if an atmega 328 can be used to send serial or spi communications reliably without using an external oscillator? Most of what I have found was for atmega128 or lilypad.