How I Ditched Datadog and Built a Self-Hosted Monitoring Stack on a $5 VPS (opens in new tab)

The Problem Datadog charges $15 per host per month for infrastructure monitoring. Add APM ($12/host), logs ($0.10/million events), and a 5-server setup costs $135+/month — $1,620/year. For indie hackers and small teams, that's a painful line item. The open-source alternatives (Prometheus + Grafana + Loki) are free, but wiring them up takes hours. Most tutorials leave you with a fragile setup that breaks on the next apt upgrade. The Solution A single docker-compose.yml that spins up 7 containe...