Going from self hosted to managed software
Some time ago I was heavily into self hosting my own software. Over time though, it became apparent that maintaining these services is a huge burden. I either abandoned most of the services or found a replacement that suits my needs and saves me time that's better spent on other things in life.
Today, I finally pulled the plug on Miniflux, the last service I used to self host (not counting House Assistant on a Pi, which I use to automate some stuff at home). The Hetzner server it ran on cost me ~4€ a month. The maintainer of Miniflux offers a managed hosting solution for 15$ a year, so to save money and time, and to support the project, I decided to switch from self-hosted to managed.
Will I ever self host again?
I really don't know. Some services (Miniflux included) required very little maintenance to keep running, so I could see myself spinning up a server again if I really wanted to run some software that doesn't have managed hosting. For now though, I'm planning on using managed services wherever I can. Nevertheless I'm proud of the things I learned during my time of self hosting my software. I think it gave me a huge boost both in terms of know how and my career, and I'd encourage everyone to dip a toe into self hosting.