[prib]

And I really agree with you too.

Adding to that, AWS does have its own PaaS: Elastic Beanstalk. We've been using it for several months now without a single hiccup. It's Java only, but it just works: load-balancing out-of-the-box, auto-scales beautifully and replaces dead instances in a couple of minutes. You can easily launch new environments for testing new features and app updates are a breeze. And you're still close to all the AWS services like S3 and CloudFront which adds a lot of value to the package.

This sounds almost like a commercial but, yes, being used to manage our own servers, this was one of the greatest moves we did. We still have a server hosted at Hetzner (mentioned by the OP), but have moved pretty much everything to the cloud. It's good to know that updating MongoDB is now just a matter of sending an e-mail to the guys at MongoHQ (which also runs on AWS) and they do it in a few seconds.

It may not work the same for everyone but from our experience it does pay off even if we're burning a few more dollars every month, as we're not spending long unexpected hours on server management anymore. And for a small team trying to focus on product development, that's gold!