I've always run my own applications on virtual private servers.
But, you soon realize that quite a bit goes into managing and maintaining a server. Add in monitoring and automated deployments onto that and you've a pretty long TODO to get through.
Do you need that? likely no. Is it great to have when your sites start to get real traction? definitely.
Now, there already exist a few open-source options in this space like Coolify and Dokploy. But they both either did too much or did things in a way I didn't want.
Deploy Crate is my response to that. A platform that takes inspiration from Heroku and focuses purely on keeping servers healthy, secure and stable while giving you an easy way to automate and monitor deployments and applications.