The Cloud platform is priced how many other SaaS platforms (and businesses) price their feature sets - the more you pay the more functionality you get. Our middle-tier, Creator Pro package, actually has everything that is available to a self-hosted customer, which is below the 90% line 😉 . Keep in mind that our platform is not just software, it comes with an Enterprise-level cloud infrastructure behind it, that anyone, even the Beginner package individuals, are benefiting from. The Beginner package itself, is very much that appeal to give the best worlds to simple communities.
While you may be sourcing your $1,000 / month here satirically, I will point out that none of our retail packages cost that much.
$50 or $100 a month would qualify for our Beginner or Creator packages. Which the Creator package, really has everything a self-hosted license has except for Pages Databases. Not knowing your site, I can't say whether or not that is worth the move.