> Setting it all up is a one-time expense...but this is knowledge that stays with you (and the company) forever. That sort of depends on how well documented th

> Setting it all up is a one-time expense...but this is knowledge that stays with you (and the company) forever. That sort of depends on how well documented the entire system is, I'd think. And even then, I'm not sure this is quite as good as it sounds. Presumably this system is going to be humming along smoothly for quite some time. But when something breaks or goes wrong, is it going to be easy to go find the problem and fix it? Probably not. Whoever built it - if they are still with the company - will likely have forgotten a lot of the little details. Even if it's documented well, that documentation needs to be reviewed, understood, and (re)learned. So yeah, it's pretty low maintenance, sure - until something goes wrong. And it inevitably will. I'm not saying this is the wrong approach. Thousands of dollars a month for a PaaS is nothing to shake a stick at. So this very well could be a great approach under the circumstances. But there will be hidden costs down the road. It's just a matter of when and how much trouble they cause. (Will it cause your systems to go down for days while a bug is investigated, for example).