Local hosting can make sense. Being able to drive to your provider and talk to them in person is quite valuable, and if you want to get the highest support tier from a large cloud provider you will often pay several times more compared to the same service with no support, assuming you are a large enough customer that they are willing to sell it. Cooperation with local businesses can also result in some fair amount of additional sales (sending customer to each other, buying services from each other, word of mouth, ectra), so the product cost may not represent the complete picture.
Local hosting can also be comparing apple with oranges. A local data center that provide a physical machine is very different from a cloud provider, especially if that cloud is located in a different continent and under different jurisdictions. Given that they were providing SSL certificates, was this a local php webshop? Data centers should be a bit more proficient with things like IP addresses and setting up any cast, but less so in providing help with php or certificates, and if they sell that it may not be their area of expertise.
Local hosting can also be comparing apple with oranges. A local data center that provide a physical machine is very different from a cloud provider, especially if that cloud is located in a different continent and under different jurisdictions. Given that they were providing SSL certificates, was this a local php webshop? Data centers should be a bit more proficient with things like IP addresses and setting up any cast, but less so in providing help with php or certificates, and if they sell that it may not be their area of expertise.
What prevented them from scaling to more tenants?