[hardwaresofton]

For me at the very least it's cost -- I can purchase a cheap VPS and run a bunch of stuff on it, with full control for much cheaper than what an AWS EC2 instance costs monthly (with better specs).

Compare this: http://www.ec2instances.info/?cost_duration=monthly

To VPS hosting from providers like: https://www.packet.net/bare-metal/ https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/dedicatedcore-vps/

The value provided by the services being managed is large, but honestly, for a lot of well-built infrastructure pieces, there is a lot of trust already for the services to not go down. Most startups/lifestyle companies/small businesses/whatever couldn't bring down a Postgres instance on a reasonably-provisioned machine if they tried (and the app is written with at least a smidgen of thought towards performance)

[cjsuk]

This. Also the cost advantage of your typical t2.micro instance disappears when you run out of CPU credits instantly running updates in...