You can always "do more" yourself. I think we all can agree that it would not be reasonable to build your own server (including) from first principles so it's always a question of where you want to draw the line. IMO what matters is how much you influence the end result and how well you are equipped to deal with bs from those your solution depends on. A VPS just means you let someone else deal with hardware issues but are still fully controlling the software - and the interface between the two is a relatively standard virtual machine which makes it easy to migrate elsewhere when the provider decides to sequeeze you.