Hosting is one of the few costs that can go from nothing to significant without any decision being made, so it is worth understanding the shapes before choosing.
The four shapes
| Model | You pay for | Scales badly when |
|---|---|---|
| Static / CDN | Storage and bandwidth. Often free at small scale | Rarely. This is the cheapest way to serve a page |
| Serverless / edge | Requests and compute time | Every page render happens per request instead of being cached |
| Managed platform | A monthly plan, then usage above it | Bandwidth or build minutes exceed the plan quietly |
| Traditional server | A fixed monthly cost regardless of traffic | Traffic spikes, or it sits idle. Predictable, rarely optimal |
The cost people do not anticipate
On usage-based platforms the bill is driven by how much work happens per request, not by how many people visit. A site that renders every page on demand costs far more than the same site serving pre-built pages, at identical traffic.
This is worth checking rather than assuming, because "prerendered" in a framework does not always mean "served without computation". If pages are being rebuilt on every request, you are paying for work already done.
Where free tiers end
- Bandwidth, usually. Large images and video are the fastest route to a bill.
- Compute time per request, which is what catches server-rendered sites.
- Build minutes on platforms that charge for them, if you deploy frequently.
- Extra services added later: a database, a queue, image processing. Each modest, all recurring.
Reasonable expectations
A marketing site or blog should cost nothing or close to it at ordinary traffic, and any bill means something is misconfigured. A store or app has real running costs, and they should be predictable and understood before launch.
Questions to ask before signing anything
- 01What happens at ten times current traffic? A number, not "it scales".
- 02Which pages are computed per request rather than served pre-built?
- 03What is not included: bandwidth, builds, database, image processing?
- 04How hard is leaving? Standard containers and standard databases are portable. Proprietary runtimes are not.
Working on something like this?
We build websites, stores and custom applications, and we will tell you honestly if the thing you are describing does not need one.