Ditching PaaS: Why I Went Back to Self-Hosting
Rising cloud and PaaS costs are prompting some developers to move back to VPSs, colocation, or even home servers, arguing they can get far more compute for the same money if they’re willing to manage infrastructure themselves. Others counter that the premium pays for reliability, networking, autoscaling, and reduced operational burden, which can matter more than raw specs—especially for small teams focused on shipping product. The exchange also explores what “self‑hosting” now means, how tools like Docker and Kubernetes have lowered the barrier to running services yourself, and the tradeoff between saving cash and spending time on ops.
Cost and Hardware vs PaaS
- Many note PaaS gives far worse raw specs per dollar than VPS or bare metal (e.g., $80+ for modest RAM/CPU vs ~$100 for very powerful dedicated servers).
- Several argue “obsolete” or used servers can still handle many workloads if you parallelize across old + new hardware.
- Others counter that newer servers consolidate multiple old machines and have better efficiency and operating costs.
Reliability, Network, and Colocation
- Some say the real value of cloud/PaaS is network quality, redundancy, and datacenter-grade power/security, not hardware.
- Colocation is presented as a “best of both worlds”: cheap monthly power+network, your own hardware, but prices and SLAs vary widely.
- Concerns raised about budget providers (e.g., sudden account termination, opaque abuse handling) vs more expensive but steadier options.
Time, Skills, and Maintenance
- Critics argue you “save” small monthly amounts but spend much more time on setup, patching, and debugging.
- Others see infrastructure work as low ongoing effort once scripted, or as a hobby and a valuable learning investment.
- Infrastructure-as-code, automation, and long LTS cycles are cited as ways to keep maintenance tolerable.
Definitions of “Self-Hosting”
- One camp: self-hosting means owning/running your own hardware on-prem.
- Another: self-hosting means you manage the software stack yourself, even on VPS or cloud instances.
- Some treat it as a spectrum: VPS is “self-hosting enough,” bare metal at home is just a more extreme version.
PaaS, Serverless, and Autoscaling
- Pro-PaaS arguments: faster iteration for small teams, managed databases/LB/auth, scale-to-zero billing, and less ops burden.
- Skeptics say most apps don’t truly need autoscaling, and predictable loads justify simple overprovisioned servers.
- There’s a view that many modern services are drastically overprovisioned relative to what efficient code actually needs.
Tools: Docker, Kubernetes, VPNs
- Docker (and simple shell scripts) are praised for making self-hosting straightforward, portable, and easy to back up.
- Kubernetes is called both “overkill” and transformative: standard APIs, self-healing clusters, easy scaling, strong ecosystem.
- VPN tools (WireGuard, Tailscale, etc.) significantly lower the barrier to safe home/self-hosted networks.