One big server ( 6 Physical Core Xeon with 64GB of Ram , 1TB Nvme SSD) only cost 80$ a month . Can start with 2-3 big servers across 3 different DC. Equlivant specs would cost easily 300$ a month on AWS/GCP/Azure .

Then you have a few hours of downtime. Happens to the best of us.

Because all the cloud providers never have downtime, DNS issues, etc? :)

At least when US east is down, half the internet is down.

Then, you had disaster recovery plans, you devised a strategy of what is an acceptable data loss, execute the reconstruction plan on the new big server, under some hours, the new big server is up again. You apologize, offer some financial compensation, etc.

And you learn from the situation, understand what are your new tolerance for data loss, failures, etc., then start new plans accordingly.