I've done self-hosted databases. It's easy to take it for granted if you've done it before, because once you've done it, you know that it is easy. But, even though it easy, it requires work. You have to spend time learning how to do it well, and you have to go through all the steps setting things up and configuring it. There's all the backups and monitoring that you want. Death by a thousand cuts, and all that.
I still self-host databases for personal projects, but I can see why so many people don't want to bother. When I've done it professionally, I was basically working as a sysadmin and managing stuff like database servers was a core job function, not something tacked on to a development job.
I still self-host databases for personal projects, but I can see why so many people don't want to bother. When I've done it professionally, I was basically working as a sysadmin and managing stuff like database servers was a core job function, not something tacked on to a development job.