Yes, bootstraped for our own money. It makes a difference.
If I generalize, I see two kinds of groups for whom this reduction of cost does not matter. The first group are VC-funded, and the second group are in charge of +million AWS bill. We do not have anything in common with these companies, but we have something in common with 80% of readers on this forum and 80% of AWS clients.
We're also bootstrapped and use Hetzner, not AWS (except for the occasional test), for very much the same reasons as you.
And we are also fully infrastructure as code using Ansible.
We used to be a pure software vendor, but are bringing out a devtool where the free tier runs on Hetzner. But with traction, as we build out higher tier services, it's an open question on what infrastructure to host it on.
There are a kazillion things to consider, not the least of which is where the user wants us to be.
If I generalize, I see two kinds of groups for whom this reduction of cost does not matter. The first group are VC-funded, and the second group are in charge of +million AWS bill. We do not have anything in common with these companies, but we have something in common with 80% of readers on this forum and 80% of AWS clients.