[theshrike79]

When you have your own server, you're also the server admin. When that server craps out, so do ALL of the services on it and it's you who will spend nights and weekends fixing it.

Or you can pay a few bucks here and few bucks there and the uptime is Somebody Else's Problem.

[sh87]

And you now have to trust this random 'someone else' to have done a better job than you can. My intuition says there's more FUD around uptime and availability than it deserves. If anything, the hard work of maintaining uptime and security is a great learning path that should not be missed by beginners and small teams alike.