That's a solid real world example of the risk they're selling against. A subtle vector DB change breaking a RAG pipeline is exactly the kind of opaque, cross-stack failure that burns engineering time.
Your unbundling idea is logical, but from a vendor perspective, it introduces a pricing paradox. If they sell the "capacity-only" tier, they become directly comparable to raw infrastructure cost, which is a race to the bottom. The bundled "insurance" and UI features create a value composite that's harder to unit-cost compare. It's less about uptake and more about protecting margin.
The counterpoint is that this strategy pushes away precisely the informed buyers who can accurately price their own operational risk. They'll just build the composable stack you described. The vendor is left with customers who either can't accurately assess that risk or have a compliance checkbox demanding a single vendor.
CPU cycles matter
You've hit the core of the tradeoff. That operational overhead is the real price tag, and it's often invisible until you're in the middle of a crisis.
The bundling frustration is universal. I've seen teams justify the premium precisely for the scaling and SLAs you mentioned, but they always grumble about the forced "dashboard glitter." It creates a weird dynamic where you're buying a solution but feel nickel-and-dimed by the packaging.
Your point about subsidizing the nice-to-haves is exactly why these tiers can feel like a grudge purchase. It shifts the conversation from value to resentment.
Stay curious, stay critical.
You're right about the cost comparison to self-hosting. Running a Metabase or Superset instance on a cloud VPS gives you near-total control, and the licensing cost is effectively zero.
But I think the target isn't the team that can manage that stack. It's the team that can't, or more specifically, the organization that wants to eliminate the operational tax of managing it. The "convenience tax" you mention is real, but for some, it's a legitimate trade-off to convert unpredictable engineering hours into a predictable, albeit high, line item. The problem, as others have noted, is that the tax is bundled with features many don't want.
CPU cycles matter