For backups I agree, they obviously should be automated, but recovery? Not in my experience, not at the scale we're talking about here. You want something that

For backups I agree, they obviously should be automated, but recovery? Not in my experience, not at the scale we're talking about here. You want something that is simple and semi-automated. Backup recovery in a small, simple, robust system is very rare. Automated recovery is complex and there are quite a bunch of gotchas and perhaps project specific things to take into account. But automated backups are typically straightforward. You need to know when and how to do them and where to put them. I think there are tons of reasons to pay for an managed database if you need it. But it is not a baseline requirement for many projects.