Considering migrating from Supabase + Railway to a dedicated server — spending $320/month and looking for advice

Hi everyone, I'm looking for advice from people with experience managing production applications and self-hosting. I'm running an e-commerce product discovery platform that tracks affiliate products, prices, offers, and product data from multiple sources. It has a database, backend services, APIs, and a relatively large amount of product and price-history data. I'm still a beginner when it comes to server administration, so I've been using managed services to keep things simple. However, the monthly costs are becoming quite high, and I'm considering moving to a dedicated server or a more affordable VPS. My current monthly hosting costs are approximately: Supabase: $120/month Railway: $200/month Total: around $320/month The main issue is handling large amounts of product data, database queries, API requests, and data transfers. Egress and bandwidth costs are also important considerations, especially when working with affiliate products and price data from multiple sources. I have millions of affiliate product records, several large tables containing product information and price history, and backend services that need to run reliably. I'm considering self-hosting the database and backend on my own server, but I don't have much experience managing production infrastructure. I want to reduce costs without creating unnecessary complexity or compromising reliability. A few questions for those with experience: Would you recommend a dedicated server or a VPS for this workload? What specifications would you suggest for a database and backend handling millions of records? Which hosting providers would you recommend if my target is significantly less than $320/month? Would it make sense to run the database and backend on one server initially? How would you handle backups, security, monitoring, and disaster recovery? Has anyone migrated from managed platforms to self-hosting? What were your actual monthly costs after migration, including storage, bandwidth, and backups? Are there any hidden costs or potential problems I should consider before making the move? I'm comfortable with development, APIs, and deployment configurations, but I'm still learning about server administration and production infrastructure. My goal is to find a reliable setup that costs substantially less than my current $320/month while leaving room for future growth. I'd appreciate recommendations based on real-world experience, especially from people who have migrated similar workloads. Thanks!