[vietor]

It's a lot of fun, but it's also a bit of a trap in my experience. My previous startup was all custom, my current one is all as hands off as we can be infrastructure wise.

Unless going custom allows you to do something that you couldn't otherwise do (cases which are rare, but existent), it's just optimizing margin. And you can't margin your way to success. (To failure yes, to success no.)

As noted above, their hosting was a big number, but it wasn't a dominant cost. It's like Amdahl's law of money, it doesn't matter how little you spend in one area if that area isn't dominating your costs.

And all else being equal, it's usually the wrong choice; the best way to grow the bottom line is to grow the top line. If you can spend X weeks cutting costs by Y$, or X weeks increasing revenue by Y$, grow the top line. It's fuel, it gives you options.

The thing I miss the most about doing it our selves was the raw fun of it, and how efficient it felt. But in retrospect it was a lot of time spent on things that ultimately didn't change the outcome.