I founded a hosting company 25 years ago when User-Mode Linux was the hot new virtualisation tech

> I find it hard to believe that the knowledge to manage a bunch of dedicated servers is that arcane that people wouldn't choose it for this kind of gigantic saving. Managing servers is fine. Managing servers well is hard for the average person. Many hand-rolled hosting setups I've encountered includes fun gems such as: - undocumented config drift. - one unit of availability (downtime required for offline upgrades, resizing or maintenance) - very out of date OS/libraries (usually due to the first two issues) - generally awful security configurations. The easiest configuration being open ports for SSH and/or database connections, which probably have passwords (if they didn't you'd immediately be pwned) Cloud architecture might be annoying and complex for many use-cases, but if you've ever been the person who had to pick up someone else's "pet" and start making changes or just maintaining …

> And Hetzner gives you almost all of that economic upside while taking away much of the physical hassle! Why are they not kings of the hosting world, rather than turning over a modest €367M (2021). Hetzner is an oldschool German company, it is not surprising to see them act this way. They are very profitable (165M Euro in 2024) and have very little debt. They also seem to be mostly bootstrapped and are not VC funded https://www.northdata.com/Hetzner%20Online%20GmbH,%20Gunzenh...