# The MVP Hosting Decision Guide A practical guide to picking the right hosting model when you're starting a SaaS — written by Nikola Lalovic. If you're early-stage and you're about to spend money you don't have on infrastructure you don't need, read this first. I've shipped 120+ projects across all three of these paths since 2018; the wrong call is reversible, but it costs you weeks. --- ## TL;DR — the decision in one paragraph - **Pre-revenue MVP, validating an idea?** Hybrid free-tier (Vercel + Supabase + Render/Railway). Costs $0/month at MVP traffic. You only pay for engineering time. - **Stable small/mid-size project, predictable users?** Managed hosting (Hostinger or similar). Predictable bill, near-zero ops, fine for marketing sites and small SaaS. - **Growth-stage, multi-tenant, or compliance constraints?** Real cloud (AWS or GCP). Higher setup cost, but it's the only path that holds up at scale. If you're not sure — start with the hybrid free-tier. The migration path from there to cloud is well-trodden. Going the other direction (over-architecting cloud, then realizing you wasted six weeks on infra for an MVP) is the painful one. --- ## Path 1 — The hybrid free-tier setup This is the path I recommend for almost every new MVP. The full stack costs $0/month at typical MVP traffic and ships in days, not weeks. ### The stack | Concern | Tool | Free tier covers | |---|---|---| | App hosting | Vercel | ~100 GB bandwidth/mo, unlimited deploys | | Database | Supabase | 500 MB Postgres, 50k MAU | | Auth | Supabase Auth | Built into the DB tier | | File storage | Supabase Storage | 1 GB | | Backend services | Render or Railway | 500 hours/mo of compute | | Email | Resend | 100 emails/day, 3k/mo | | Domain & CDN | Cloudflare | DNS, basic WAF, CDN — free | | CI/CD | GitHub Actions | 2k minutes/mo on private repos | ### What "MVP traffic" means here In my experience, the free-tier limits are not the problem. The problem is usually: - A single page that hammers the DB on every load (fix: cache, or move it client-side). - A backend job that runs constantly instead of on-demand (fix: queue + cron). - An image that's 5 MB instead of 50 KB (fix: optimize before deploy). If your MVP has, say, 500 monthly active users and ordinary usage patterns — chat, dashboard views, occasional file uploads — you'll stay well inside every free tier on this stack. ### Setup walk-through 1. **Domain**: register on Cloudflare (cheapest renewals + free DNS). 2. **App**: `npx create-next-app`, push to GitHub, connect to Vercel. ~10 min. 3. **DB + Auth + Storage**: create a Supabase project. Note the URL + anon key + service role key. ~10 min. 4. **Email**: create a Resend account, verify a domain. ~15 min. 5. **Backend services** (only if you need long-running tasks or webhooks): a tiny Express on Render or Railway, $0 until you exceed 500 hours/mo. 6. **CI/CD**: GitHub Actions runs your tests and Vercel handles preview deploys. Done. The whole setup should take a focused afternoon. After that, you ship features. ### When you outgrow it Honest signs you're outgrowing the free tier: - DB > 400 MB (Supabase tier upgrade is $25/mo — still cheap). - Vercel bandwidth > 80 GB/mo (you're getting real traffic; revenue should be funding this). - Cold-start latency on Render is hurting UX (move to a hot tier or migrate to AWS Lambda / Fluid Compute). When any of these hit, you migrate one piece at a time. You don't replatform everything at once. That's the beauty of the path — every component is replaceable. --- ## Path 2 — Managed hosting For projects where the front-end is most of what matters: marketing sites, small WordPress / WooCommerce stores, product showcases, side businesses. ### When it fits - You don't need custom server-side logic; a CMS does the job. - Traffic is predictable and bounded (low thousands of visitors per day). - You want a single place to log in and manage hosting, email, domain, and TLS. - You don't want to think about infrastructure — at all. ### Cost shape $5–$30/month flat. The bill never surprises you. Most of my managed hosting setups land around $15/month all-in. ### What you give up - Cold cloud capabilities (auto-scaling, edge functions, advanced caching). - Bring-your-own-runtime — you're stuck with whatever PHP or Node version the host supports. - Easy multi-region deployment — managed hosts are usually single-region. ### When to use it Stable workload, predictable cost, the developer (me) handles config and updates. You stop thinking about hosting; the bill becomes a line item like rent. --- ## Path 3 — Real cloud (AWS or GCP) For projects where the platform *is* the product. Multi-tenant SaaS at scale. Compliance-heavy industries. Workloads that genuinely need elasticity. ### When it fits - You have or expect to have **multi-region** users. - You have **compliance** requirements that mandate where data lives. - You're operating **multi-tenant** infrastructure (multiple customers, isolated cleanly). - You need **infrastructure as code** (CloudFormation, Terraform) for repeatability and audit. - Your workloads are **bursty** (10× peaks vs. baseline) — managed hosting will degrade or break. ### What it costs - Setup: 1–3 weeks of engineering, depending on scope. - Monthly: starts around $50/mo for a minimal setup; scales with usage. - The biggest hidden cost is **on-call**. If your cloud is critical, someone has to wake up when it's not. ### What I always include in cloud setups - **IaC** (CloudFormation or Terraform) — no click-ops. - **Secrets manager** (AWS SSM, Secrets Manager, GCP Secret Manager). - **Observability** (CloudWatch / Cloud Logging + a dashboard you can show). - **Cost alerts** at 50%, 80%, 100% of monthly budget. - **Runbooks** for the top 5 incidents. - **Documented rollback** for every production-critical deploy. If your cloud setup doesn't have these, it's not a real cloud setup. It's just AWS-shaped technical debt. --- ## Migration paths You don't have to pick the "right" path forever. The migrations are well-known. ### Free-tier → cloud When: you've outgrown the free tier and you have multi-region or compliance needs. Order of moves: 1. Move the database first. Postgres → RDS or Aurora. Run both for a week, sync changes, switch over. 2. Move backend services. Render/Railway → ECS / Fluid Compute / Cloud Run. 3. Optionally move app hosting. Vercel → CloudFront + Lambda@Edge if you need it. Often you don't — Vercel scales with you. Time: 2–6 weeks of focused work for a typical SaaS. ### Managed → cloud When: you've outgrown the host's ceiling. Order of moves: 1. Database first (often the painful one — managed hosts use proprietary admin tools). 2. App content / static assets to CloudFront or Cloud CDN. 3. Custom backend logic to Lambda / Cloud Run. 4. Cut over DNS. Time: usually shorter than free-tier → cloud because the codebase is simpler. ### Free-tier → managed When: you want a predictable bill and don't need cloud-scale features. Order of moves: usually a single weekend. Export the DB, dump it to the new host, swap DNS, done. The Vercel-hosted Next.js app is harder to move to a managed host than the DB; in practice you keep the Vercel app and only move the DB / backend / file storage to managed. --- ## How I help I do all three. The point of this guide is that I don't push you toward the path that's most billable for me. I push you toward the path that's right for *your* stage. Ways to work with me: - **30-minute decision call** — I'll tell you which path fits and what it costs. Free. - **Setup engagement** — I configure the stack and ship code. Fixed-price. - **Migration engagement** — I move you from one path to the next without breaking the live product. Fixed-price. [Get in touch](https://belikenikola.com/#get-in-touch) and we'll figure out where you are. — Nikola