Deployment is one of the most consequential decisions you'll make about your billing stack. And one of the most misunderstood.

Start with the myth: self-hosting rarely saves money. Once you account for infrastructure, engineering time, and the real cost of supporting a deployment the vendor doesn't operate, self-hosted typically costs more than managed cloud. Teams self-host for control, sovereignty, and customization. Not for savings. Get that straight and the rest of the decision gets easier.

This guide is vendor-neutral for most of its length. It's about the architecture decision, not any one product. It covers:

• The four reasons self-hosting earns its cost: data sovereignty, zero third-party access, code-level customization, and vendor independence
• When managed cloud wins — and why speed and DevOps capacity are the real deciding factors
• Total Cost of Ownership: what self-hosted premium actually costs and why
• The CFO's view: close timelines, audit trails, ERP integration, and data retention
• A decision framework and FAQ — plus where Lago fits across all three deployment paths