Cheap Web App Hosting

When it comes to hosting a web app, the costs can be absolutely through the roof!  The wonderful dream of beautiful vistas can come crashing down when the hosting bill comes due.  Simple development mistakes can cost in the thousands.  Why is web app hosting so expensive, and can the cost be lowered without sacrificing usability?

Well, I'm here to tell you that not all web apps need to be entrenched in the big public cloud providers, nor do they need to be indebted with huge hosting costs every month.  Let me first start by telling a story.

The Not Cheap Way

Once upon a time, not incredibly long ago, but definitely not this year, I was graciously drafted into an organization that bought, incubated, and resold smaller companies.  Some of us are familiar with the game: private equity.

Well, this particular gig was a "cloud ops" role, and our task was to migrate web apps from whatever random hosting company that the smaller company was using, and move that puppy into the cloud.  Sounds like a solid plan, right?  After all, the cloud provides object hosting, container hosting, managed databases, a copious amount of logging, and best of all, every piece is compatible with the other!  So you can spread out the web app into many many pieces, then tie them all back together, but in a complex way.

As this game went on over time, I realized something.  Hosting a web app in this way is not cheap.  I repeat, not cheap.  If you want to play this game, just make sure you have the revenue first, because you're about to bust your budget!

It is at this time that I hit a turning point in my life.  I wasn't going to do this migrate-and-increase-costs thing anymore.

What makes the web app hosting so expensive?  From what I have deduced, the cost comes in a couple ways:

1. The app is spread out to many different services
2. You then lose track of those services, and things get out of hand

If we were to compare the public cloud to something, as an analogy, I would say that public cloud is like a credit card.  Some people have their ducks in a row and can handle credit cards without contributing to the national consumer debt number.  While on the other hand, some people have a credit card for emergencies, and everyday is an emergency.  And keep in mind, the whole idea behind a credit card isn't necessarily to give you freedom, but to collect interest on those who carry a debt on the card.  Now pause for a moment, and apply that revenue model to the situation at hand.  Not cheap.

The other day I came across this article, which I found interesting: How an empty S3 bucket can make your AWS bill explode.

Besides all that, there is always the complexity to manage.  Consider this from David Hansson:

You see this syndrome all over the tech industry. Basic problems people could easily solve for themselves, cheaply and quickly, getting turned into scary and insurmountable challenges that only a sophisticated solution (usually on a subscription!) will cure.

And take special note of the final paragraph, with the associated links:

Whether that means daring to connect a computer to the internet, dumping that micro-services monstrosity, ditching Slack, or going #nobuild, it's all within your power.

Hosting it Cheap

Can a web app be hosted on the cheap?  Possibly, and the good news for you, probably.  I reviewed an article about somebody saving about $800,000, check that out here:

And then there is this, again from David Hansson, of 37 Signals, who reported on his companies massive cloud exit:

But the proof was in the pudding. Not only did we complete our cloud exit quickly, customers scarcely noticed anything, and soon the savings started to mount. Already in September, we'd secured a million dollars in savings on the cloud bill. And as the reserved instances (where you prepay for a whole year in advance to get better pricing) started to expire, the bill just kept collapsing...

So how cheap is cheap?  Well, it's all relative.  By simplifying the hosting environment, a web app can have costs reduced by leaps and bounds, sometimes 80%.  Cheap is going from $1,000,000 to $200,000.

Cheaper Solutions

Now when I say cheap, I don't mean awful.  I mean less-costly.  There is plenty of quality options and solutions.  One of those options is Super Server Hero!  We offer a managed hosting service.  This means we provide the servers and setup, you provide the data, and boom, cheap web app hosting.  We also provide other services to help with your website.

What does hosting a web app with Super Server Hero look like and cost?  Well, the cost is dependent on what is needed.  This is why I am targeting small and medium enterprises.  With this size scale of web app, costs can be exceptionally more reasonable than some of the big players.  A comparitevely low cost to you works out as a decent profit to me. Cheap web app hosting.  Great customer service.  And happy heros keeping track of your app.  This is the win-win zone.

Til next time