In a lot of these discussions the point gets raised about the work to maintain a self-hosted server. When i've done it I install the os (usually ubuntu server), turn off unused services, setup the firewall to only allow required ports, and then it just sort of sits there and does its thing. Uptimes have been measured in years in some cases and the server just sits there happily serving whatever html and connecting to whatever db forever.
I'm most cases people stress uptime too much. Developers worry about downtime during restarts and overcomplicate everything because of it. Meanwhile, my national railway reservation system has an hour of planned downtime daily and life carries on.
I mean, typically hosting a static site that's fine, but with the number of exploits these days and the ability for people to chain them together, maybe you don't even realize your box has been exploited?
Uptimes in years means your box, especially without updates has something it could be targeted with.
Note that the parent said "uptimes measured in years", so they are either using a more complex system with multiple servers, or they are not doing security updates.
