Self-Hosted Benefits Without the Infrastructure Headaches

The Objection Everyone Has

You've read about the benefits of self-hosted commerce. Data ownership. No transaction fees bleeding your margins. Freedom from arbitrary platform rules. Unlimited customization. No more begging vendors for features or watching prices climb every year.

It sounds compelling. But then the objection surfaces—the one that kills most conversations about leaving SaaS:

"We don't have the technical staff to manage our own infrastructure."

It's a reasonable concern. Your "IT department" might be one person who also handles desktop support, the phone system, and somehow became responsible for the office printer. You don't have DevOps engineers. You've never heard of Kubernetes and don't want to learn. The idea of being responsible for server security keeps you up at night.

Here's the thing: that objection is based on a false assumption. Self-hosted doesn't mean managing servers yourself. It never did. And in 2025, the gap between "SaaS convenience" and "self-hosted control" has essentially closed.

Separating Ownership from Operations

The SaaS industry has successfully conflated two separate things: who owns the platform and who operates the infrastructure. They want you to believe that if you want someone else to handle servers, you must also give them control of your application, your data, and a percentage of your revenue.

That's not true. These are independent decisions:

• Ownership means you control the codebase, the data, and the business rules. You decide what features exist, what integrations are supported, and how your business processes work.
• Operations means someone keeps the servers running—handles scaling, security patches, backups, monitoring, and middle-of-the-night emergencies.

With SaaS, you give up both. With traditional self-hosting, you take on both. But there's a third option that's become remarkably mature: you own the platform while someone else operates the infrastructure.

You retain all the benefits of ownership—data control, customization freedom, no transaction fees, no vendor lock-in—while specialists handle the parts you don't want to deal with.

Why This Matters for Decision Makers

If you're evaluating commerce platforms, this distinction changes the entire calculation. The question isn't "SaaS vs. managing your own servers." The real options are:

• Option A: Pay Shopify/BigCommerce 0.5-2% of every transaction, forever, plus monthly fees, plus app fees, in exchange for them owning your platform and operating the infrastructure.
• Option B: Pay a hosting provider $100-500/month to operate the infrastructure while you own the platform, keep 100% of transactions, and maintain complete control.

For a business doing $1 million in annual revenue, Option A costs $5,000-$20,000+ per year in platform fees alone. Option B costs $1,200-$6,000 per year for hosting—often less than a single year of SaaS platform fees. And the gap widens as you grow, because hosting costs are largely fixed while SaaS transaction fees scale with revenue.

The "we don't have technical staff" objection evaporates when you realize you're not choosing between "convenience" and "complexity." You're choosing between "renting" and "owning"—and the owning option can be just as hands-off.

The Spectrum of Managed Options

There's no single "right" approach to hosting a self-owned platform. Instead, there's a spectrum of options with different trade-offs between cost, control, and convenience. The right choice depends on your technical resources and how involved you want to be.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

PaaS providers give you a platform to deploy applications without managing underlying infrastructure. You push your application (or a Docker container), and they handle servers, networking, scaling, SSL certificates, and basic maintenance. Think of it as "cloud hosting with training wheels."

You're still responsible for the application itself—deploying updates, monitoring for issues, configuring the software. But the heavy lifting of infrastructure disappears.

Best for: Businesses with some technical capability—a developer on staff, a technical co-founder, or an ongoing relationship with a development partner. You need someone who can deploy code and troubleshoot application issues, but they don't need infrastructure expertise.

Managed Application Hosting

Managed hosting goes further. These providers don't just host your application—they actively manage it. They handle deployments, monitor for problems, perform updates, manage backups, and often provide support when things go wrong.

This is the closest you can get to SaaS convenience while still owning your platform. You might never touch a server or deploy code yourself. The provider handles operations; you focus on running your business.

Best for: Businesses with minimal technical staff who want completely hands-off operations. You're essentially hiring an outsourced DevOps team, but you retain ownership of the platform and data.

Cloud Provider Managed Services

Major cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) offer managed services for databases, containers, and application hosting. You're on their infrastructure, and they handle patching, backups, scaling, and availability for the components they manage.

This is a middle ground—more control than PaaS (you can access more cloud services), but less operational burden than raw infrastructure. Many businesses use managed databases (like AWS RDS or Google Cloud SQL) alongside PaaS or container platforms.

Best for: Businesses that might need cloud-specific features (machine learning services, advanced analytics, specific compliance certifications) or expect to grow into more complex infrastructure over time.

Concrete Options: Where to Host STSTSI Commerce

STSTSI Commerce is built on industry-standard technology: Java 21, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, and OpenSearch. This isn't exotic infrastructure—it's the same stack that powers thousands of enterprise applications. It runs well on virtually any modern hosting platform.

Here's a practical breakdown of your options, from simplest to most flexible:

Tier 1: Maximum Simplicity

These platforms prioritize ease of use above all else. You can go from zero to running commerce platform in hours, not days. They handle SSL, scaling, backups, and monitoring automatically. The trade-off is slightly higher cost per resource and less fine-grained control.

Heroku

Heroku pioneered the modern PaaS model and remains the gold standard for simplicity. It's what "it just works" looks like for application hosting. Deploy with a Git push, scale with a slider, add PostgreSQL with one click.

• Monthly cost: $50-200 for typical commerce workloads
• Setup time: 2-4 hours with our documentation
• Technical skill needed: Minimal—ability to follow step-by-step guides
• Best for: Businesses that want to forget about infrastructure entirely

Railway

Railway is the modern alternative to Heroku—same simplicity, better pricing, more transparent resource usage. It automatically detects your application type and configures deployment. The dashboard shows exactly what you're paying for and why.

• Monthly cost: $30-150 for typical commerce workloads
• Setup time: 1-3 hours with our documentation
• Technical skill needed: Minimal
• Best for: Cost-conscious teams who still want maximum simplicity

Render

Render offers excellent Docker support with PaaS simplicity. STSTSI Commerce ships with production-ready Docker configurations that deploy directly to Render. Automatic HTTPS, managed PostgreSQL, straightforward scaling.

• Monthly cost: $25-100 for typical commerce workloads
• Setup time: 1-2 hours with our Docker configurations
• Technical skill needed: Basic familiarity with Docker (optional)
• Best for: Best value for money among simple platforms

Tier 2: Balance of Simplicity and Power

These options require slightly more setup but offer better pricing at scale and access to broader cloud ecosystems. Good choices if you expect significant growth or need specific cloud services.

DigitalOcean App Platform

DigitalOcean combines PaaS simplicity with access to their broader infrastructure offerings. Start with App Platform, and if you outgrow it, you can migrate to managed Kubernetes or raw VMs without changing providers. Good on-ramp to more sophisticated setups.

• Monthly cost: $25-150 for typical commerce workloads
• Setup time: 2-4 hours
• Technical skill needed: Basic to intermediate
• Best for: Businesses expecting significant growth

Google Cloud Run

Cloud Run is container-based serverless done right. Deploy Docker containers, and Google handles everything—scaling to zero when idle (you stop paying), scaling up automatically under load. Combined with Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, it's powerful and cost-efficient.

• Monthly cost: $20-200+ (highly variable based on traffic patterns)
• Setup time: 4-8 hours
• Technical skill needed: Intermediate
• Best for: Businesses with variable/seasonal traffic patterns

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Elastic Beanstalk wraps AWS's powerful (but complex) infrastructure in a simpler interface. You get automatic load balancing, auto-scaling, and health monitoring while retaining access to the full AWS ecosystem when needed.

• Monthly cost: $50-300+ (you pay for underlying AWS resources)
• Setup time: 4-8 hours
• Technical skill needed: Intermediate
• Best for: Businesses already invested in AWS or needing AWS-specific services

Tier 3: Full Managed Services

For businesses that want completely hands-off operation—true "set it and forget it"—these options provide application-level management, not just infrastructure hosting.

Third-Party DevOps Consultants

Many agencies and freelance DevOps consultants specialize in deploying and managing applications. They can set up STSTSI Commerce on the platform of your choice, configure monitoring and alerts, and provide ongoing support. Since STSTSI Commerce uses standard technology (Java, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Docker), any experienced DevOps professional can manage it.

• Monthly cost: Hosting costs + $200-1,000/month management fee
• Setup time: 1-2 weeks (they do the work)
• Technical skill needed: None—you're hiring experts
• Best for: Businesses wanting flexibility in choosing their support provider

STSTSI Managed Hosting

We offer fully managed hosting for businesses that want the ultimate hands-off experience. We deploy and manage STSTSI Commerce on enterprise-grade infrastructure. We handle updates, security, monitoring, backups, and support. You focus entirely on running your business.

• Monthly cost: Custom pricing based on requirements
• Setup time: We handle everything
• Technical skill needed: None
• Best for: Businesses wanting SaaS convenience with self-hosted benefits

Real Talk: For the One-Person IT Team

Let's address the most common scenario directly: your company has one IT person (maybe it's you), and they're already stretched thin handling laptops, software licenses, and keeping the Wi-Fi working. The idea of taking on "commerce infrastructure" sounds like a nightmare.

Here's the reality: with the right platform choice, maintaining STSTSI Commerce takes less time than managing the average SaaS platform with its constant app updates, integration troubleshooting, and workarounds for missing features.

The Recommended Path

For resource-constrained teams, we recommend Render or Railway with managed PostgreSQL. Here's what that actually looks like day-to-day:

Initial setup (one-time, 2-4 hours):

• Create account on Render/Railway
• Connect to our Git repository or upload Docker image
• Click "Add PostgreSQL database"
• Set environment variables from our template
• Click deploy

Ongoing maintenance (monthly, 1-2 hours):

• Review automated backup status (takes 2 minutes)
• Check resource usage dashboard (takes 5 minutes)
• Apply updates when available (click a button)

What the platform handles automatically:

• SSL certificate renewal
• Database backups
• Server security patches
• Uptime monitoring
• Basic scaling

Compare this to typical SaaS maintenance: troubleshooting broken app integrations, manually exporting data for reports the platform doesn't support, submitting feature requests that never get implemented, and re-training staff when the vendor makes UI changes without warning.

If You Want Zero Involvement

If even 1-2 hours monthly is too much, or you simply don't want the responsibility, hire someone. A deployment partner or our managed hosting service handles everything:

• Initial deployment and configuration
• Ongoing monitoring and alerting
• Security updates and patches
• Backup verification
• Performance optimization
• Incident response

Your involvement: zero. You use the platform like any SaaS, except you own it.

The Numbers: SaaS vs. Managed Self-Hosted

Let's make this concrete with real cost comparisons for a business doing $1 million in annual online revenue:

Even with fully managed hosting—the most expensive self-hosted option—you're looking at savings of $7,400 to $21,200 per year compared to typical SaaS. And these savings grow as your revenue grows, because SaaS transaction fees scale while hosting costs stay relatively flat.

At $5 million in revenue, that SaaS cost balloons to $25,000-$100,000+ per year. The self-hosted cost? Still roughly the same—maybe slightly higher for additional server capacity.

What You Keep No Matter How You Host

Here's what matters: regardless of whether you use Render, Railway, AWS, a deployment partner, or our managed hosting, you retain the fundamental benefits of ownership:

• Your data is yours: Customer information, order history, and analytics live in your PostgreSQL database—an industry-standard format you can query, export, or migrate anytime. No proprietary formats. No rate-limited APIs for your own data.
• Your code is yours: Full access to the STSTSI Commerce source code. Customize anything. Add features. Remove what you don't need. Integrate with any system.
• Your freedom is real: Don't like your hosting provider? Move to another one. It's the same application running the same database—migration is measured in hours, not months.
• No transaction tax: Zero percent of your sales go to the platform. Hosting costs are predictable and don't scale with your success.
• No arbitrary limits: No caps on products, orders, users, or API calls. No throttling during Black Friday. No paying extra for features that should be standard.

The hosting provider handles servers and infrastructure. You own everything that matters: the application, the data, the business logic, and the customer relationships.

Common Concerns Addressed

"What if something breaks at 2 AM?"

With managed hosting or a deployment partner, that's their problem—they get the alert, they fix it, you sleep through it. With PaaS like Render or Railway, the platform handles most infrastructure issues automatically. Application-level bugs? Those exist on SaaS platforms too, and at least with self-hosted, you can actually fix them.

"What about security? We can't manage that ourselves."

You're not managing security yourself. The hosting platform handles infrastructure security— firewalls, network isolation, server hardening, security patches. STSTSI Commerce handles application security—authentication, authorization, input validation, encryption. Your responsibility? Setting strong passwords and keeping your admin credentials secure. Same as with any SaaS.

"What about compliance (PCI, GDPR, etc.)?"

Self-hosted actually makes compliance easier in many cases. You control where data is stored (data residency requirements), who can access it (audit requirements), and how long it's retained (deletion requirements). With SaaS, you're trusting their compliance and hoping your auditors accept it.

"We don't have anyone who can deploy code."

Then use managed hosting—someone else deploys it for you. Or use a deployment partner. This is a solved problem. The cost of having someone else handle deployment is a fraction of what you'd pay in SaaS transaction fees.

"What if STSTSI goes away?"

You have the source code. It's built on standard, well-documented technology (Java, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL). Any competent developer can maintain and extend it. Compare that to SaaS: if they go away, you have nothing—just an export of data and a search for a replacement platform.

Making the Decision

Here's a simple framework for choosing your deployment approach:

Getting Started

STSTSI Commerce ships with production-ready Docker configurations that work on every platform mentioned in this article. Our documentation includes step-by-step deployment guides for each provider, complete with configuration templates and environment variable references.

For businesses that want hands-off deployment and management, contact us about STSTSI Managed Hosting. We'll handle the infrastructure, updates, monitoring, and support—you focus on running your business.

The Bottom Line

The "we don't have technical staff" objection to self-hosted commerce made sense in 2010. It doesn't make sense in 2025. The infrastructure landscape has changed dramatically. Managed platforms handle the complexity. Specialists are available for hire. The tools have matured.

What hasn't changed is the fundamental trade-off: SaaS vendors extract ongoing rent from your business in exchange for convenience. Self-hosted platforms give you ownership in exchange for... what, exactly? A few hours of setup? A modest monthly hosting bill? Someone else managing the servers?

The convenience gap has closed. The cost gap hasn't. The control gap certainly hasn't.

You can have the ease of SaaS with the ownership of self-hosted. The only question is how much longer you want to pay the SaaS tax before making the switch.