Use One Big Server (2022)

A thoroughly good article. It's probably worth also considering adding a CDN if you take this approach at scale. You get to use their WAF and DNS failover.

A big pain point that I personally don't love is that this non-cloud approach normally means running my own database. It's worth considering a provider who also provides cloud databases.

If you go for an 'active/passive' setup, consider saving even more money by using a cloud VM with auto scaling for the 'passive' part.

In terms of pricing the deals available these days on servers are amazing you can get 4GB RAM VPSs with decent CPU and bandwidth for ~$6 or bare metal for ~$90 for 32GB RAM quad core worth using sites like serversearcher.com to compare.

What’s the issue with running Postgres inside a docker container + regular backups? Never had problem and relatively easy to manage.

no PITB, but mostly just 'it's hassle' for the application server I literally don't need backups, just automated provisioning/docker container etc. Adding postgres then means I need full backups including PITB because I don't even want to lose an hours data.

Or use SQLite and your backups are literally a copy of a file.

You can abuse git for it if you really want to cut corners.

Only if you can freeze your application for that long, in which case your statement is true for all non-broken databases.

It only freezes your application if you've misconfigured it.