Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#31

Post by JaggerJo » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

I really like fly.io, but you’d need to provide more information about the kind of backend and the expected load. Also what does it currently cost?

I host a few sites on fly for pennies, but they don’t see a lot of traffic.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#32

Post by digianarchist » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 4:24 AM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #18

You can easily get a VPS for around $5/month from quality vendors. You can probably find a lot of offers around $1/month for a VPS on lowendbox, lowendtalk, and webhostingtalk. If you want more oomph than that, you can find dedicated server offers at those three places, starting around maybe $30/month. Typically pretty old systems, but I enjoy having a whole ancient box rather than one core in a vm on a modern box. M…

Like AWS Lightsail?

https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#33

Post by jasonthorsness » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 6:12 AM UTC

digianarchist wrote: post #32

toast0 wrote: post #18

You can easily get a VPS for around $5/month from quality vendors. You can probably find a lot of offers around $1/month for a VPS on lowendbox, lowendtalk, and webhostingtalk. If you want more oomph than that, you can find dedicated server offers at those three places, starting around maybe $30/month. Typically pretty old systems, but I enjoy having a whole ancient box rather than one core in a vm on a modern box. M…

Like AWS Lightsail? https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/

I’ve been using Lightsail (mostly because I use AWS for a ton of stuff at work) and it has been great. No complaints.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#34

Post by deployhq » Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 7:59 AM UTC

DeployHQ+VPS (Hetzner, Vultr, DO, etc)

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#35

Post by dtnewman » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 12:40 AM UTC

AWS lambda + API gateway. I use serverless to deploy to these.

If traffic is high, this could get pricy. For example, i have a site up getting about 20,000k visitors a day, hitting it many times each and it's probably costing me $400/month whereas a $50 server would probably do the trick (it's a temporary thing that i'm migrating away soon). But I have a bunch of smaller projects with a few visitors a day and the cost rounds to $0.

The nice thing is that it'll basically scale infinitely when you need it to.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#36

Post by babyent » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 4:00 PM UTC

quintes wrote: post #2

What’s the stack? Why is AWS expensive? What’s the most costly? Why vercel? I’ve heard it gets costly at scale here on HN no other data points. Does the charity have the ability to operate it? Budget? Skills? If not what the plan?

Vercel is honestly meant for enterprise. The free/cheap tier is a cool toy. Vercel replaces the need to build out an expensive dedicated UI deployment/tooling team (like when your org has like 50 product teams working on a large enterprise saas).

Anyone else should just stick to vite react starter SPA and actually make money first. If they need SEO, they can use something simple too.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#37

Post by DataOverload » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 8:58 PM UTC

Hey - get in touch with me at Zuplo. If this is for a charity, we might be able to swing you a really cheap deal.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#38

Post by Jean-Philipe » Thu, May 01, 2025, 9:18 AM UTC

quintes wrote: post #2

What’s the stack? Why is AWS expensive? What’s the most costly? Why vercel? I’ve heard it gets costly at scale here on HN no other data points. Does the charity have the ability to operate it? Budget? Skills? If not what the plan?

The stack is nodejs and postgres - the most expensive part is the database actually. I could probably look into caching more of the expensive (mostly read-only) queries.

I'm one of the two developers who will help out with development and devops. There's some budget for that. So we have the skills.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#39

Post by Jean-Philipe » Thu, May 01, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

TheKelsbee wrote: post #19

Hi! AWS Developer Advocate here. Depending on the nonprofit/charity status it's possible they could qualify for free or reduced price hosting. There are a few different programs that you could qualify for. There is also the Techsoup organization, which helps nonprofits and charities with technology needs: https://page.techsoup.org/amazon-web-services-for-nonprofits I would highly recommend looking through there for n…

Thanks, I had no idea, I'll check it out! We're still in the process of completing the paperwork, so it'll take a while until we have an official status.

Re: Ask HN: Cheapest way to host a back end

#40

Post by quintes » Fri, May 02, 2025, 8:58 AM UTC

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #38

quintes wrote: post #2

What’s the stack? Why is AWS expensive? What’s the most costly? Why vercel? I’ve heard it gets costly at scale here on HN no other data points. Does the charity have the ability to operate it? Budget? Skills? If not what the plan?

The stack is nodejs and postgres - the most expensive part is the database actually. I could probably look into caching more of the expensive (mostly read-only) queries. I'm one of the two developers who will help out with development and devops. There's some budget for that. So we have the skills.

Database on RDS? I guess caching queries could be useful. Aurora serverless?

What’s the user base and load? All internal NGO or public?

Public sector AWS peeps should maybe jump in and see if they can offer support have you checked with them?