Actually, rapidly developing a startup (as is the context of this website) is one of the best use cases of cloud services.
It’s true: You can set up and maintain all of your own services, create a backup system for them, test it all, and handle your own redundancy. If you have an engineering background, this probably feels natural and will feel like a lot of progress and accomplishment. But in the time it takes to do all of that (usually distributed and interwoven into other activities) you could have been prototyping out your startup. That’s the value of cloud.
You can always invest the effort into setting up your own services later as a cost reduction move. Doing the cost-reduction activities before you’ve even prototyped a business isn’t a great use of precious time in a startup’s early days.
It’s true: You can set up and maintain all of your own services, create a backup system for them, test it all, and handle your own redundancy. If you have an engineering background, this probably feels natural and will feel like a lot of progress and accomplishment. But in the time it takes to do all of that (usually distributed and interwoven into other activities) you could have been prototyping out your startup. That’s the value of cloud.
You can always invest the effort into setting up your own services later as a cost reduction move. Doing the cost-reduction activities before you’ve even prototyped a business isn’t a great use of precious time in a startup’s early days.