Congrats on shipping! I could see myself using a service like yours, and bringing my own server is perfect as I can adjust and scale it up/down as needed.
I'm thankful that Heroku prices are that extreme because it made me learn how to deploy and run everything by myself back in the day.
While I know how to deploy myself I am fed up with that. Especially when it comes to a new project. There are so many places where you can screw up with a typo or stuff like that.
So while I know how to do it by myself, I don't enjoy doing that and that's how the project got started.
I'm thankful that Heroku prices are that extreme because it made me learn how to deploy and run everything by myself back in the day.