I don't know. I rent a bare metal server for $500 a month, which is way overkill. It takes almost no time to manage -- maybe a few hours a year -- and can handle almost anything I throw at it. Maybe my needs are too simple though?

Just curious, what is the spec you pay $6000/year for? Where/what is the line between rent vs buy?

It's a server with:

- 2x Intel Xeon 5218

- 128gb Ram

- 2x960GB SSD

- 30TB monthly bandwidth

I pay around an extra $200/month for "premium" support and Acronis backups, both of which have come in handy, but are probably not necessary. (Automated backups to AWS are actually pretty cheap.) It definitely helps with peace of mind, though.

I have a similar system from Hetzner. I pay around $100 for it. No bandwidth cap.

I have setup encrypted backups to go to my backup server in the office. We have a gigabit service at the office. Critical data changes are backed up every hour and full backup once a day.

Yeah -- I know I could probably get a better deal. I pay more for premium support ($200), as well as a North American location. Plus, probably an addition premium for not wanting to go through the effort of switching servers.