Backend simplicity also means a more shallow moat. It makes it easier for Digital Ocean/Linode (Akamai)/Hetzner to offer a competing service with the same backe

Backend simplicity also means a more shallow moat. It makes it easier for Digital Ocean/Linode (Akamai)/Hetzner to offer a competing service with the same backend knobs to turn, should they decide they want to get into that market. The goal should be to make the backend as simple as possible, but no simplier. Complexity here leads to operational burden and toil. But that's why you hire good SREs and treat them well. What's more important is frontend complexity, aka how difficult it is for customers to use. Backend and frontend complexity aren't necessarily linked, which, imo, fly.io achieves, downtime aside.