It seems that I have three options, in This Modern World:

1. Virtual server.
   
   Many options; the big ones are Amazon, Digital Ocean, Google. They are probably all about the same. Price is somewhere between $450 and $800/month, maybe?
   
   Pro:
   • Everyone does it this way.
   • When it is Upgrade Season, spinning up a new instance for rebuild/migration is easy.
   • I will never have to think about disk, RAM or power supplies going bad.
   Con:
   • Expensive.
   • The way I would be using it would be to have a single instance. Nobody does it that way, so it probably doesn't work very well.
   • I need 2TB of file system storage. Nobody does it that way, so it's expensive.
   • Figuring out exactly which of their many options is the configuration that I need is really difficult.
   • Whatever IP address they give me is probably already on every email spam blacklist in the world.

2. Dedicated server.
   
   I'm seeing numbers anywhere from $100/month to $500/month. It's all over the map, which does not inspire confidence.
   
   Pro:
   • It's a real damned computer, with predicable behavior.
   • When disk, RAM or power supplies go bad, someone else fixes it.
   • I never need to physically visit it.
   Con:
   • It is hard to tell whether the companies that offer this service will still be in business two years from now.
   • It's hard to tell whether they are real companies, or "one flaky guy".
   • Spinning up a new instance in Upgrade Season is somewhat more involved, and maybe costs me a couple hundred bucks.
   • Though it can be located anywhere, since all of my customers are in San Francisco, it probably should be on the West Coast. That narrows the already narrow field of options.
   • People keep recommending companies that are not hosted in the country I live in. This strikes me as extremely foolish for several reasons.

3. Bare rack slot, with my own home-built 1U computer in it.
   
   Probably something like $100/month, plus the cost of the computer (say, $1000, will last 4 years).
   
   Pro:
   • It's a real damned computer, with predicable behavior.
   • Cheap.
   Con:
   • Hardware failures are my problem.
   • Spinning up a new instance in Upgrade Season is a huge pain in the ass.
   • The data center has to be local, because I probably need to go physically visit it every year or two.

Figuring this out is such a pain in the butt. I really want to believe that option 1 is the way to go, but I'd need to get the price down (without first needing to completely re-design the way I do absolutely everything, thanks), and it just sounds like it's going to be flaky.

Options 2 and 3 sound flaky in their own ways. Pro: I already understand those ways. Con: one of those ways is why I'm looking to move in the first place.