> There's a crossover point where self-managed is cheaper than cloud Single data point here: before cloud managed dbs were a thing our smallish startup was run

> There's a crossover point where self-managed is cheaper than cloud Single data point here: before cloud managed dbs were a thing our smallish startup was running mysql on virtual servers by installing it from the linux package manager. Always worked great, runs without needing manual attention for years at a time once set up, so I've never felt the need to change. So at least in some cases the crossover point is "right from the start".