When Self-Hosting Is Worth Considering
Self-hosting is not automatically better. It shifts work from the vendor to your team (or your implementation partner). Before going down this path, there should be a concrete reason beyond "it feels more secure".
Reasons that hold up:
- Data residency requirements: Some industries , healthcare, public sector, financial services , have regulatory requirements about where data can be stored. Managed cloud vendors often cannot guarantee EU-only or CZ-only data residency at the infrastructure level.
- Cost at scale: SaaS pricing scales with users. At 50+ users, a per-seat SaaS bill often exceeds the cost of running your own server. The crossover point varies by system but is real.
- Deep customization needs: Some operational systems require modifications at a level that SaaS vendors do not permit. Self-hosted open-source platforms allow this.
- Network isolation requirements: Manufacturing environments, laboratories, or companies handling classified information may need systems that operate on an internal network without internet dependency.
Reasons that do not hold up:
- "We want full control": Control sounds good until you are managing OS patches, SSL certificate renewals, and database backups at 2 AM after an unexpected outage.
- "It's cheaper": It can be, but only if you account for the full cost: server cost, monitoring, backups, maintenance time, and the cost of incidents. Many companies undercount these.
The Three Main Options
Hetzner (dedicated or cloud)
Hetzner is a German provider with data centres in Nuremberg, Falkenstein, Helsinki, and (since 2023) Ashburn. For Czech companies, the German locations satisfy EU data residency requirements. Pricing is aggressive: a dedicated server with 64GB RAM and 2TB NVMe storage costs around 80–150 EUR per month. Hetzner Cloud VPS instances start at under 5 EUR per month for light workloads.
What you get: raw compute at very competitive prices, EU-based infrastructure, solid network uptime. What you manage: everything above the hardware , OS, updates, monitoring, backups, security.
Best for: cost-sensitive self-hosting where the technical overhead is handled in-house or by an implementation partner. The most common choice for CZ/SK companies moving away from vendor cloud.
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
AWS offers virtually unlimited scale, a deep feature set, and a global footprint. The Frankfurt region (eu-central-1) gives EU data residency. The tradeoff is complexity and cost: AWS pricing is opaque, bills are unpredictable if not carefully managed, and the learning curve for anything beyond basic EC2 instances is real.
For a standard ERP deployment on AWS (2 application servers, 1 database server, managed backups), expect 500–1,500 EUR per month at mid-scale. That is 3–5x Hetzner for equivalent compute. AWS makes sense when you need specific services (managed Kubernetes, advanced networking, compliance certifications like ISO 27001 or SOC 2) that justify the premium.
Best for: companies with existing AWS infrastructure, teams with AWS expertise, or use cases requiring AWS-specific services.
Managed cloud from the software vendor
Most major business software platforms offer their own managed hosting: the vendor runs the infrastructure, handles updates, and provides uptime guarantees. You pay a premium over self-hosting but avoid the operational overhead entirely.
This is not "self-hosting" in the strict sense, but it is a legitimate middle ground. You get more control over the software than pure SaaS (you can usually choose your update schedule, access your database directly, and deploy customizations), without managing the underlying infrastructure yourself.
Best for: companies that need flexibility at the application layer but do not want to manage infrastructure. The most common choice for companies whose IT team is small or focused on other priorities.
Direct Comparison
| Criteria | Hetzner self-hosted | AWS self-hosted | Vendor managed cloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost (mid-scale, 20-50 users) | 80–200 EUR | 500–1,500 EUR | 300–800 EUR (included in subscription) |
| Technical overhead | High , you manage everything | High , complex tooling, cost management required | Low , vendor handles infrastructure |
| EU data residency | Yes (DE/FI locations) | Yes (Frankfurt region) | Depends on vendor , confirm explicitly |
| Customization freedom | Full | Full | Limited by vendor policy |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% (hardware); you manage the rest | 99.99% (infrastructure); you manage the application layer | Vendor SLA typically 99.5–99.9% end-to-end |
| Backup responsibility | Yours | Yours (or managed backup service at extra cost) | Vendor |
| Security patching | Yours | Yours | Vendor |
What Self-Hosting Actually Requires
Before choosing self-hosted, be honest about what the ongoing commitment involves:
- Someone owns the server: OS updates, security patches, certificate renewals , these happen on a schedule whether you plan for them or not. If nobody on your team owns this, self-hosting will produce technical debt faster than it saves money.
- Backup and recovery are tested, not assumed: A backup that has never been tested is not a backup. Restore drills should happen at least quarterly.
- Monitoring runs before incidents do: You need to know your server is down before your users do. Basic monitoring (uptime, disk space, CPU, application health checks) needs to be in place from day one.
- The cost calculation is honest: Infrastructure cost + maintenance time (at a real hourly rate) + incident response time. For a small company without dedicated IT, this often exceeds managed cloud costs when counted properly.
We set this up as part of system deployments , monitoring, automated backups, update schedules , so the ongoing operational overhead is defined and owned rather than left to chance.
Frequently asked questions
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