[lettergram]

I really dont understand. Im deploy rails webapps all the time with pretty large postgres backends.

You could totally spin up multiple digital ocean instances to get a much cheaper infrastructure. I usually use one for load balancing, 2+ for running the app, and usually one for the backend postgres. You could also get away with using something other than digital ocean for the postgres.

But for 6000 users, depending on the app. I can probably get away with like $30 a month with this setup. Including the database.

Total setup time might be a day the first time. But it scales pretty well, costs significantly less.

[jakejake]

The hosting costs appear to be about $70 ($30 for the hosting and $50 for the DB). That doesn't seem excessive to me.

The other expenses appear to be various other services (slack, support site, logging service, etc). Lot's of 3rd part services to handle stuff.

Obviously it's a lot cheaper if you can do many of these things yourself (run your own support web app, use a free chat service, etc, etc). But we all have to decide what services we want to pay for vs run ourselves - in some cases it is cheaper to not have to spend the time!

[illyism]

The setup time gets smaller each time you do it and with a more experienced team. You could decrease this further with snapshots or templates easily.