I have seen a web app for 1,000 monthly users spend $1000/month for it.
Those were all paid users and the company was profitable with over 70% net margins after all costs including labor and research were factored in.
I’m all for $5/month digital ocean hosting when it makes sense but you also need to be realistic if there are revenues. Hosting should not be a major cost for the business.
And most of the time isn't, right? I have seen project managers keeping a whole development team of 10+ developers busy for entire sprints to "cut down the infra costs", without realizing that the dev team costs 500+ kEUR/quarter, while the hosting costs were something like 7/8 kEUR/month.
Those were all paid users and the company was profitable with over 70% net margins after all costs including labor and research were factored in.
I’m all for $5/month digital ocean hosting when it makes sense but you also need to be realistic if there are revenues. Hosting should not be a major cost for the business.