After a few months of experimenting on AWS, I got scared seeing how fast small side projects could turn into expensive monthly bills.

I built my own DIY cloud, a minimal self-hosted setup that lets me deploy apps, databases, and backups on cheap VPS or bare-metal servers. At first I just wanted to save money, but I realized that managing it can easily become a full-time SRE job.

Still, for small, experimental, or hobby projects, this setup works perfectly. It keeps costs predictable and gives full control without needing large-scale infrastructure.

https://diy-cloud.remikeat.com

Would love to hear from others who tried leaving managed clouds behind.