I don’t think we should go down that rabbit hole of redefining self hosting ad anything other than host it in your own infra. So if AWS disappeared today, would your product still be self hosted? If being self hosted does not actually depend on your product but on the availability of another provider, there I don’t think we should call it self hosted.

> Based on a strict definition, I agree that Embrasure may not be considered self-hosted, but I don't think that's the "prevailing expectation."

I wont 100% discount that I live in a bubble, but try ask 100 random people what "self hosted" means, I would strongly guess that very very few says "I can (only) spin up some resources on AWS and deploy it there"

> ask 100 random people

I don't think it should be left to the opinion of 100 "random" people.

I'll quote Wikipedia[0] again: "Self-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a website or service using a private web server..."

Embrasure is built on a Virtual Private Cloud instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(web_services)

> I don't think it should be left to the opinion of 100 "random" people.

well judging by the other comments here, you will be getting even less who agree with your definition

Self-hosting does not mean you can't run it on AWS, but people expect more. Just look at Postgresql as an example of a self hosted software. You can run it in the cloud or your own basement.

Postgresql is a great example.