Eh, buying hardware isn't necessarily cheaper if you factor in operational costs like power, cooling, and especially internet (which gets very expensive very quickly for servers). Datacenters get to spread this cost out over many servers, small installations don't.
No, but as an example, if you want more than 30Mbps upload, it can cost you hundreds of dollars per month depending on location. (Depending on location.)
There are no free lunches. I do not disagree buying hardware is cheaper but operational overhead and opportunity cost are real.