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Self hosting vs Managed service?
Apart from pricing and data privacy, are there any other factors that contribute to the decision between self-hosting vs a managed solution?
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You will probably find my blog post useful: ben-makes-stuff.beehiiv.com/p…
tl;dr when getting started, use and abuse free credits from managed services. Then start self hosting and I recommend the approach I outlined in the guide above.
Edit: as @marc said, I would also recommend using a managed service for your database hosting regardless of which stage you’re at. Aiven is a good option as it has a Postgres free tier with 5GB storage, more than enough for a lot of production websites
Nice, even tho on a free tier it's a single node, they probably still manage backups and disaster recovery for you. Seems convinient, although a geek in me wants to run 2 nodes on Hetzner 😅
They do yes. Automated backups and everything by default without needing to configure anything
For me ease-of-use and reliability plays a role too.
Most of my databases are managed by Digital Ocean. It's probably more expensive than hosting my own Postgres docker container, but having it managed by Digital Ocean gives me peace of mind.
I know it's secure, I know their backups work and are well tested, I know it's configured appropriately, etc. Important for mission critical services like databases.
Yes this is a good point. For everything with state, I also use a managed service typically.
Self hosting is much easier when you can blow away the entire node without worrying about losing critical data. You will need to do this at least once in my experience heh
A stateless self-hosted app seems to be the most popular choice, and that’s great to know. It’s definitely something I’ll keep in mind when I’m building my product. Thanks again!
I totally agree, managing self-hosted databases and backups can be a real pain. Self-hosting apps are a bit more straightforward.
I am mostly self hosting with Digital Ocean and Kamal.
I used to put everything on Netlify and Vercel. But they've raised SO much VC money. They're clearly going to need to make that back and then some. So, I'll gone back to self-hosting with Coolify.