What's your actual monthly hosting spend?

jane_ffm

Member OP

Joined:: May 2024
Posts:: 194
From:: Frankfurt, DE

2mo ago

#1

Hi everyone — Jane here from Contabo. We're running a quick community pulse-check on actual hosting spend versus what gets recommended in threads.

Quick poll structure:

Under $3
$3–5
$5–10
$10–20
$20+

My suspicion: there's a social-desirability bias toward naming bigger numbers. People recommend "enterprise-grade" $25 plans while quietly renewing a $6 annual special.

I'll start: our internal data (anonymized, aggregated) shows median self-reported spend is 3x median actual transaction value. Curious if that gap shows here.

Please vote honestly — no judgment, we're all optimizing somewhere.

— Jane @ Contabo

Single mode till I die 💀

tomchan

Member

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 202
From:: Bristol, UK

2mo ago · edited

#2

Voted $3-5. Running a fun little project on a 512MB NAT box, $8/year. It actually works for my wireguard hub + pihole — https://www.wireguard.com.

vm: 1 vcpu / 512mb / 5gb ssd
cost: $0.66/mo
uptime: 187 days

The $20+ recs always come from people with one static site, lol.

works on my bench ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

center807

Member

Joined:: Jun 2024
Posts:: 85
From:: Prague, Czechia

2mo ago · edited

#3

Interesting dataset, Jane. At our facility we run redundant feeds with N+1 on all critical paths; enterprise-grade infrastructure simply doesn't price below $40/unit for single-tenant bare metal. For colocation with redundant power and blended bandwidth, sales can discuss custom quotes. The $5-10 segment is typically oversubscribed virtualization with no SLA backing. Enterprise-grade means enterprise-grade.

haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

Joined:: May 2024
Posts:: 329
From:: Ohio, US

2mo ago · edited

#4

I've been in this business 20 years, and the race to the bottom always ends the same way: provider vanishes, data gone, surprised Pikachu faces all around. Mark my words, that $8 annual special becomes a $0 recovery effort. The cluster at $5-10 just means most of you are one billing dispute from offline.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me

mateo_dragon

Member

Joined:: Nov 2024
Posts:: 70
From:: Buenos Aires, Argentina

2mo ago · edited

#5

I am in the $5-10, is honest. The AWS is very expensive for server small, I have VPS good in the RackNerd, cost $7. How much cost your electricity for home server¿ I think is more cheap cloud, no¡ I use for website personal and mail, is enough. The support is bad but price is nice.

giorgiauc

Member

Joined:: May 2025
Posts:: 16
From:: Tbilisi, Georgia

2mo ago · edited

9 #6

$5-10 range, but that's not the full picture. Electricity costs at my location make home metal non-viable; optimization means keeping overhead near zero. I look at price per watt of compute delivered, not headline number. Some months the spread between providers covers a significant portion of operational overhead. You learn to read between the lines on "unmetered" offers.

wilmaethqn44

Member

Joined:: Jun 2024
Posts:: 135
From:: Cardiff, UK

2mo ago · edited

1 #7

Sorry for the silly question but is $5-10 really enough for a small shop? I pay $18 now and still worry im going to break something. Saw this thread and wondering if im overpaying. My site is just wordpress with maybe 50 visitors a day. Should I move down or is that risky 😬

frames, tables, still valid HTML

craigdzir

Member

8-bit forever

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 40
From:: Glasgow, UK

2mo ago · edited

#8

Enterprise-grade at $40/unit or enterprise-grade at $5 with a fancy logo

TA

Tan1990

Member

Joined:: Aug 2024
Posts:: 4

2mo ago · edited

#9

Wordpress which version

SingaporeRep

Member

Benchmark Addict

Joined:: Jul 2024
Posts:: 227
From:: Singapore, SG

2mo ago

#10

Same. $8/year NAT crew checking in.

fio, iperf, geekbench. results or gtfo.

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