Grafana started as visualization tool and has now decoupled multiple products for observability - LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics). You need to configure and maintain multiple sub-products for a full-stack observability setup.
While grafana stack is great, OneUptime has all of these in one platform and makes it really simple to use.
We also are built natively on OpenTelmetry, use clickhouse for logs / metrics / traces storage - so queries are really fast.
I would say to kick Grafana Cloud hard - the freemium has everything in it, with back ends, no need to manage anything. And with a trial period you get to really push it. The story that it's a lot to self manage is apples to oranges if you decide on a pure OSS approach vs. the easy cloud path.
