You're talking about application complexity when the parent is talking about operational complexity. The difference between some app servers talking to a Postgr

You're talking about application complexity when the parent is talking about operational complexity. The difference between some app servers talking to a Postgres instance with a replica and that plus an ES cluster is jump. If you're paying for something managed then it probably doesn't matter much to you. In my experience it's actually quite rare that teams working on a product where search is a feature and not the product itself ever graduate from what Postgres offers so I tend to push back on ES when it isn't free.