[OkayPhysicist]

If the only thing you need is "server, accessible via the internet, always online", and you're not interested in all the vendor lock-in masquerading as useful services offered by the big cloud providers, then small VPS hosts are 100% the way to go. For mid-sized servers they're cheaper (i.e., stuff that wouldn't be free on the big clouds, but not "I want a petaflop"), with more transparent pricing (I pay $12, every month. If I get inundated with traffic, I'll get cut off until I choose to pay more).

[direwolf20]

If you need a lot of power you should also look into dedicated servers from small hosts, they usually have very good power to cost ratios.

The set of companies that sell VPS and the set of companies that sell dedicated servers aren't the same set.