For smaller operations I’d still go with a rent-a-server model with AWS. Theirs is a critical mass though where roll your own makes sense.
The long term app model on the market model is shifting much more towards buying services vs renting infrastructure. It’s here where the AWS case falls apart with folks now buying Planet Scale vs RDS, buying DataBricks over the mess that AWS puts for for data lakes, working with model providers directly vs the headaches of Bedrock. The real long term threat is AWS continues to whiff on all the other stuff and gets reduced to a boring rent-a-server shop that market forces will drive to be very low margin.
Yes a lot of those 3rd party services will run on AWS but the future looks like folks renting servers from AWS at 7% gross margin and selling their value-add service on top at 60% gross margin.
This doesn't really explain why you wouldn't just get a hetzner. I don't have much experience with either, but if you know how to setup your infra then hetzner seems like a no-brainer? I do not want to be tied to AWS where I have no idea what my bill will be
Depending on the use case you very much could just use Herzner. A simpler and more transparent customer experience than trying to navigate the mass complexity of AWS for basic stuff.
A bunch written about this recently by analysts. That is the “bear” outlook on AWS