20$ vs 300$ does not really matter if you have multiple 10K MRR.
I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
141–150 of 539 posts
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#142> The enterprise mindset dictates that you need an out-of-process database server. But the truth is, a local SQLite file communicating over the C-interface or memory is orders of magnitude faster than making a TCP network hop to a remote Postgres server. I don't want to diss SQLite because it is awesome and more than adequate for many/most web apps but you can connect to Postgres (or any DB really) on localhost over…
Looks like the overhead is not insignificant: Running 100,000 `SELECT 1` queries: PostgreSQL (localhost): 2.77 seconds SQLite (in-memory): 0.07 seconds ( https://gist.github.com/leifkb/1ad16a741fd061216f074aedf1eca... )
A total performance delta of Also:
> PostgreSQL (localhost): (. .) SQLite (in-memory):
This is a rather silly example. What do you expect to happen to your data when your node restarts?
Your example makes as much sense as comparing Valkey with Postgres and proceed to proclaim that the performance difference is not insignificant.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#143I know this article is about the stack, but I'd like to point out that the success of the author has probably more to do with their marketing/sales strategy than their choice of technical infrastructure. Something to remind to many tech folks on HN
True. But he’s able to do marketing because he has the money, time and sense of priorities to do so.
The moral of the story is: Don’t be (another) fool, your tech stack is not your priority.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#144When he switches from Kubernetes in the cloud to Nginx -> App Binary -> Sqlite he trades operations functionality for cost. But, actually you can run Kubernetes and Postgres etc on a VPS. See https://stack-cli.com/ where you can specify a Supabase style infra on a low cost VPS on top of K3s.
I think his argument is that the functionality is unnecessary. You don’t need dynamic service scaling because your single-instance service has such high capacity to begin with. I guess it’s all about knowing when to re-engineer the solution for scale. And the answer is rarely ”up front”.
Dynamic scaling is not really even available on a single node kubernetes.
I was thinking more of
Running multiple websites. i.e. 1 application per namespace. Tooling i.e. k9s for looking at logs etc. Upgrading applications etc.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#145Nice list! I'd say the SQLite with WAL is the biggest money saver mentioned. One note: you can absolutely use Python or Node just as well as Go. There's Hetzner that offers 4GB RAM, 10TB network (then 1$/TB egress), 2CPUs machines for 5$. Two disclaimers for VPS: If you're using a dedicated server instead of a cloud server, just don't forget to backup DB to a Storage box often (3$ /mo for 1TB, use rsync). It's a good…
Does WAL really offer multiple concurrent writers? I know little about DBs and I've done a couple of Google searches and people say it allows concurrent reads while a write is happening, but no concurrent writers? Not everybody says so... So, can anyone explain what's the right way to think about WAL?
No it doesn't - it allows a single writer and concurrent READs at the same time.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#146There are zero reasons to limit yourself to 1GB of RAM. By paying $20 instead of $5 you can get at least 8gb of RAM. You can use it for caches or a database that supports concurrent writes. The $15 difference won’t make any financial difference if you are trying to run a small business. Thinking about on how to fit everything on a $5 VPS does not help your business.
$15 is not exactly zero, is it? If you don't need more than 1GB, why pay anything for more than 1GB? I recall running LAMP stacks on something like 128MB about 20 years ago and not really having problems with memory. Most current website backends are not really much more complicated than they were back then if you don't haul in bloat.
Saving 15 USD on 10k+ USD MMR is ridiculous.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#147eh the super low cost only comes from low complexity. If complex, people pay more, features cost more, infra costs aren’t that big of a cost compared to dev time.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#14820$ vs 300$ does not really matter if you have multiple 10K MRR.
Exactly. Deciding on some very expensive subscriptions that can cost 1k per month or so might be worth thinking about, but this is just meaningless optimisation.
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#149> I bought a GitHub Copilot subscription in 2023, plugged it into standard VS Code, and never left. I tried Cursor and the other fancy forks when they briefly surpassed it with agentic coding, but Copilot Chat always catches up.
> Here is the trick that you might have missed: somehow, Microsoft is able to charge per request, not per token. And a "request" is simply what I type into the chat box. Even if the agent spends the next 30 minutes chewing through my entire codebase, mapping dependencies, and changing hundreds of files, I still pay roughly $0.04.
> The optimal strategy is simple: write brutally detailed prompts with strict success criteria (which is best practice anyway), tell the agent to "keep going until all errors are fixed," hit enter, and go make a coffee while Satya Nadella subsidizes your compute costs.
Wow. I'll definitely be investigating this!
Re: I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack
#150If this sounds like basic advice, consider there are a lot of people out there that believe they have to start with serverless, kubernetes, fleets of servers, planet-scale databases, multi-zone high-availability setups, and many other "best practices". Saying "you can just run things on a cheap VPS" sounds amateurish: people are immediately out with "Yeah but scaling", "Yeah but high availability", "Yeah but backups"…
I don't know what to say. People keep saying these engineers exist and here I am not having seen a single, and I follow many indie hackers communities.
A devops coworker found my blog and asked me how I host it, is it Kubernetes. I told him it's a dedicated server and he seemed amazed. And this was just a blog. It's real