Digital Ocean, Linode, etc. are do-it-yourself platforms. If you have the time and knowledge to install, configure, secure, monitor, etc. etc. all the services

Digital Ocean, Linode, etc. are do-it-yourself platforms. If you have the time and knowledge to install, configure, secure, monitor, etc. etc. all the services that go into a typical application, then spending the time yourself will save you money. On the flip side, if you have the money but lack time, knowledge, or desire to manage all that complexity just pay Heroku to do it for you... or any other PaaS for that matter. I've never used Heroku, but long ago I reached a point where dealing with hardware, services, networking, server racks, etc. got really boring. Today, I expect computing resources to be little more than appliances where I can effectively say "Here's the code I want you to run. Make it happen." and not have to even think about firewalls, scalability, failover, backups, software conflicts/compatibility, security updates, and a hundred other things. If you're managing all that yourself, you're basically doing a job that a computer ought to be doing on your behalf based on a specification you've provided.