A rudimentary price comparison tends to show AWS/Azure costs much higher than bare metal or VPS, sometimes an order of magnitude higher, but the reality is more

A rudimentary price comparison tends to show AWS/Azure costs much higher than bare metal or VPS, sometimes an order of magnitude higher, but the reality is more nuanced. Many people still prefer hosted services because (a) total cost of ownership can be much lower once you factor in the cost of a qualified engineer installing it, ensuring it's online 365/24/7, and keeping it up to date (b) comparisons tend to be apples-to-oranges, since many AWS services are charged on a per-transaction basis. With a VPS, it often appears a lot cheaper by comparison, but you're also paying for a lot of capacity (RAM, CPU, storage) that you're not using, and generally can't use most of the time because you need to reserve enough for peak periods.