So for years I've used Docker Compose as my stepping stone to k8s. If the project is small, or mostly for my own consumption OR if the business requirements don't really support the complexity of k8s, I use Compose. It's simple to manage with bash scripts for deployments, not hard to setup on fresh servers with cloud-init and the process of removing a server from a load balancer, pulling the new container, then adding it back in has been bulletproof for teams with limited headcount or services where uptime is less critical than cost control and ease of long-term maintenance. You avoid almost all of the complexity of really "running" a server while being able to scale up to about 20 VMs while still having a reasonable deployment time.