If doing professional work, use heroku, App Engine or any similar PaaS solution.
If doing hobby/side projects, Dokku is a great self hosted heroku alternative. Easy to setup and use.
Kubernetes is a very low level tool. If you want to run it yourself you need s full team of infra experts to not fuck it up. So I think it could be a great tool for large companies with many teams and a lot of money.
As usual the problem is not taking into account context, and single developers or startups thinking they need to do what google does so they go full Go microservices spa Kubernetes crazy. Add some of the Agile bullshit on top of this and welcome to your average startup nowadays.
What about backups? What about the vps going down? What about upgrading the server? What about security updates?
Professional work on VPS is either a lot more work, or not that professional. If it is not being a lot more work then you're not providing the same service, security and guarantees to your customers.
This is where PaaS shine. Easy and safe. And if you factor in your own time, then cheaper too.
Thing is, as a startup, there might be better solutions to your problem than Kubernetes, but investors specifically look to check the „use K8s“ checkbox on their rating sheet. It’s just as stupid as it sounds, and there’s nothing you can do if you need venture money.
To add to this, one could also learn Erlang or use kubernetes alternatives like Nomad, which, last I checked, has had less levels of abstraction than kubernetes.
