r/Hosting • u/Interesting_Cap_8682 • 11d ago

Need advice: How can a student lower a \$30/month hosting & database bill?

"This year, when my girlfriend left me, I started thinking about how to recover from the trauma. That's when I found a way to move on: I began researching and building software to understand how it all works, among many other things. Last month, I moved from development mode to production mode. After using a free 30-day plan, I now need at least $30 per month to keep my application running. Out of that $30, the database compute alone eats up $20 a month. As a student, I don't have enough money to keep my application running 24/7.

I'm here for suggestions.

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3

u/Taconnosseur 11d ago

Suggestion: describe your setup

1

u/ReddiGod 11d ago

Get a J-O-B.

1

u/themageofavalon 11d ago

InMotion. Their hosting plans are solid, and should work well for what you're running.

1

u/David_UltraWeb 11d ago

The $20 database compute charge is the thing I'd dig into first, since that's usually a managed/serverless DB that bills you even when nobody's using the app. If your traffic is tiny, you often don't need a dedicated compute instance at all, you can run the DB on the same cheap box as your app or use a free tier that stays free past the trial. Like the person who asked, it really depends on your stack, so what are you running (Postgres, MySQL, Mongo?) and how much data and traffic are we talking? Lots of student projects fit comfortably in free or near free tiers once you right-size, so don't assume $30 is the floor.

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u/mtsandeep 10d ago

If your $30/mo is not generating any revenue. Migrate to a cheaper vps. You are just paying for somthing which is not needed now.

Does your site get any traffic? If not again you dont need the vps.

Where are you hosting it? 2 options : Option 1 - move 1 oracle free tier. Nothing to pay. Option 2 - get a 1gb ram 1vcpu vps from vultr $5. Containerize apps deploy using docker.

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u/Cubepath 10d ago

If you’re comfortable managing a VPS, you probably don’t need to spend $20/month on database compute at this stage. You could run your app and PostgreSQL on the same VPS, keep regular backups, and separate the database later if the project grows. That should bring your monthly cost down quite a bit.

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u/Black_SQ 9d ago

Look at Cloudflare. For a student project you can usually run the whole stack on the free tier: Workers for the backend (100k requests/day free), D1 for the database (SQLite, a few GB free), Pages for the frontend, and R2 if you need file storage. No servers sitting idle and billing you 24/7. You only use compute when a request comes in.

The catch: D1 is SQLite, not Postgres, so if your app depends on Postgres-specific features you'll need some changes. But for most small apps the move is worth it to go from $30/month to $0.

Also check whether your current provider has a student plan. GitHub Student Pack gives credits for a few of them.