I wrote a little about the choice between PaaS and VPS here:

https://blog.engineyard.com/2014/pets-vs-cattle

My summary here would be that both are good, for different things. If I was deploying a personal site or a personal app, I would probably go with a VPS, because it's easier to set up, and can be a lot cheaper. But if scaling or uptime was a concern, I'd want to go the PaaS route. It comes with a few upfront costs (configuration, statelessness, price, etc) but is absolutely worth it in the long term.