I agree with this. You can get a lot of hardware for not a lot, especially if you build your own.
If money’s not that tight, another option is a modern NAS that can run services and Docker. Depends on what you want to do with it in the long term: file server vs All The Services.
A few years ago it was time to replace my ancient NAS and I was tossing up between building a dedicated server with something like TrueNAS and Nextcloud, or opting for a QNAP or Synology that could do it all for me. Opted for a Synology DS920+ and haven’t looked back. It can’t do anything processor-intensive, but it nails it for everything else. I have ~30 Docker stacks running on it, including Wireguard, and SWAG for SSL+MFA external services. Synology Drive (GDrive) and Photos (GPhotos/Picasa) on Linux, Windows, Mac, Android and iOS let me ditch the last of my cloud services. It’s also running Plex Media Server, tying into an Nvidia ShieldTV as the client.
I have Netdata running in a container, which has a useful all-in-one-pane view, and it does a good job of auto detecting other containers and the host OS. Its essentially zero config.
It also has alerting capability, which is not zeroconf (configuring it properly is a bit of a chore). 😅
They try to push a pro/paid version, but it’s subtle and completely optional (a bit like the way Portainer does it).