I use a VPS for email (configured opensmtpd + IMAP over SSL), VPN server, HTTP Proxy and host 3-4 personal applications (nginx + mysql + ruby apps). The hard p

I use a VPS for email (configured opensmtpd + IMAP over SSL), VPN server, HTTP Proxy and host 3-4 personal applications (nginx + mysql + ruby apps). The hard part was to set-up all these services, keeping them up-to-date, since no other party depends on them it is considerably easy and almost risk-free. Other than that is not time-consuming at all. Only 2 times in 3 years I had to re-configure a service. Most of the times I just run an upgrade-script on a tmux session and everything runs smoothly (I rarely use pre-compiled packages). Now, if I had a production-level web application, I would probably set-up as carefully as I could a new VPS and roll my application there, up to the point where I needed to scale. If it would be a one-man-show I'd probably go with Heroku (since I write sinatra/ruby/rails applications) or similar (possible cheaper) service to avoid spending time on sys-admin. But these service IMHO are still, expensive for projects with no income while a VPS can do all that and mode at once at a considerably lower price. ps. As a side note. Before I join HN, I though that all programmers were capable of sys-admin (UNIX servers). Then I realized that tasks that seem trivial to me, are considered somewhat difficult for others and vice-versa of course.