Solr or Sphinx based searching is what pushed me out of most of the PaaS offerings and into my own VPS. It's unfortunate that most of the hosted services out there are too expensive for side projects.
When I looked at WebSolr, the cost exceeded my entire VPS structure, even for their cheapest plans.
We think our prices actually compare pretty well to self-hosting. Hosting a search engine is not cheap when it comes to memory and disk IO, and I don't envy anyone trying to shoehorn production Solr traffic into a small VPS.
Not to mention, we've got transparent replicated redundancy on all our indexes—one of our better-kept secrets, I really need to update our marketing materials—so double your VPSs there.
After setting Solr up, I definitely see the value that you guys provide for high traffic sites. But there's a difference between production level needs and hobbyist level needs for a side projects.
For side projects I'd be okay with indexing being less aggressive, sizes being more restrictive, and response times being higher if that made the pricing more accessible.
I'd be happy to give you guys more money when I've got the traffic to justify it, but it'd be nice to be able to flip that on when I need it.
When I looked at WebSolr, the cost exceeded my entire VPS structure, even for their cheapest plans.