DO is great. I have moved most of my stuff from AWS to DO. Simple to use and no dodgy billing tactics.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Thanks, but I have had issues with clients with Cloudflare in the past. They tend to ban/block websites or traffic on subjective grounds. I am happy to spin off 5 VMs if needed.

The reason I like to self host is because I am kind of sick of these large companies acting like they own us.

Thanks for the detailed post. I will keep these in mind.