[em-bee]

not at all meaningless. unless you have money to invest, at the beginning you don't have an income. i could not afford to spend $300 a month to host a new product that doesn't make any money yet. i can afford the $20 however, but then once the product does make money, why should i change it if it works?

[elAhmo]

As a student you might be living in a 6sqm dorm with shared bathroom and a kitchen for 400 USD a month. You get a job paying you 200k afterwards.

Why would you change where you live if it works?

[em-bee]

that's a strange argument. living in a dorm doesn't work the same way than living on my own. so actually if i like it, yeah, why would i change it until i need to? i would change it to have more privacy or to be closer to my new workplace. those are qualitative differences that matter.

moving from self hosting to a hosted service gives me other advantages. whether those matter depends on the specific situation. the reality is that in many cases the hosting costs rise faster than the costs for self hosting would, and big companies save lot of money by moving back.

switching from $20 a month to $300 a month is only worth it if i save at least a day of work per month. but that's often not the case. and the more you scale up the less work per revenue/profit you have.

the one big advantage of paid services is that they lets you scale up faster. if that is what you need, then sure. OP does not scale fast.