I didn't knock on VMs or infra as code generally, or suggest you go all the way to self hosting. Doing IaC of course is orthogonal to AWS. Your best alternative

I didn't knock on VMs or infra as code generally, or suggest you go all the way to self hosting. Doing IaC of course is orthogonal to AWS. Your best alternatives depend on your needs. It might be some higher level app platform too, like various current Heroku style platforms etc. Just know what you're getting into.