[codingdave]

Sounds like you've got the right view. Most cloud solutions are easier and cheaper when you are small, but once you scale up their costs and complexity go up, and old-school bare metal self-hosting becomes cheaper and easier again.

The trap is that people buy into so many diverse features of the cloud platforms that they don't know how to unwind from it all and just go stand up a big box (or small boxes) that runs their stuff. My recommendation is to embrace the cloud to get something rolling, but remain hyper-aware of how you would de-cloud to be sure you never lock yourself in too tightly.