Hosting Cost vs. Maintenance Calculator

Find your true cost of ownership — including the hours you'll spend on server maintenance.

What are you building?

Choose the option that best describes your application. This determines compute requirements automatically.

Informational Website A site with pages, images, and text — no login or database. Like a brochure, portfolio, or blog. (HTML, Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby)
Content-Managed Website A site where you edit content through an admin panel. Like a news site or department website. (WordPress, Drupal, other CMS)
Web Applications
Simple Web App or API An app that responds to requests or shows basic pages — no heavy processing. (Flask, FastAPI, Express)
Full-Featured Web App An app with user accounts, forms, a database, and multiple pages. Like an intranet or portal. (Django, Laravel, Rails)
Interactive Dashboard An app with live charts, filters, and data tables that users interact with. Each user holds data in memory. (Plotly Dash, Streamlit, Shiny)
Data Processing or AI/ML An app that crunches numbers, trains models, or makes predictions. Processing can take seconds to minutes. (TensorFlow, PyTorch, R, SciPy)
Other Technologies
JavaScript/TypeScript App A server app built with JavaScript or TypeScript. (Express, Next.js, Fastify)
PHP Web App A web app built with PHP. (Laravel, Symfony)
Java App An enterprise-style app built on Java. Needs significant memory. (Spring Boot, Jakarta EE)
Ruby Web App A web app built with Ruby. (Ruby on Rails)
.NET / C# App A web app built with Microsoft .NET. Needs significant memory. (ASP.NET Core)

Any special requirements?

Select all that apply. Each adds to your compute needs. You can skip this step if none apply.

Database on the same server Your app stores data in a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB) running on the same machine.
Background tasks Your app runs scheduled jobs or processes things in the background (email sending, report generation, queue processing).
File or image processing Your app resizes images, generates PDFs, or processes uploaded files on the server.

What is your team's Linux/SysAdmin experience?

This directly affects how many hours you'll spend on server maintenance.

None Never managed a server. Would need to learn or hire someone.
Basic Can SSH in, run apt-get, edit config files — but not confident with security.
Expert Comfortable with firewalls, Nginx, CI/CD, monitoring, and incident response.
This drives the hidden labor cost calculation. Default is $40/hour.
$

What matters more to you?

There's a real tradeoff between cheap bills and time spent managing infrastructure.

Low Monthly Bills I'll invest time to keep hosting costs down.
Balanced I want a reasonable price without spending too much time on maintenance.
Low Maintenance Time I'd rather pay more and focus on building my product.

Do you need auto-scaling?

Auto-scaling adjusts resources based on traffic. Unmanaged VPS requires manual or custom setup.

Yes My traffic is unpredictable or has spikes. I need automatic scaling.
No My traffic is steady. A fixed-size server is fine.

Recommended Option

Hosting prices sourced from official provider pages (Feb 2026). Labor rate estimated at your skill-adjusted hourly value.
Pay-per-use prices (App Runner, Cloud Run, Container Apps) assume 24/7 always-on operation; actual costs may be lower. All prices in USD.

Disclaimer: CAES does not endorse, recommend, or have any affiliation with the hosting providers listed above. This tool is provided for informational and educational purposes only.
© 2026 CAES Web Team, University of Georgia College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences