Ask HN: Is a back end worth $35/mo?

[tihal]

Hi all, I am trying to get some side hustles started lately and want to min-max my cost and effort while doing so (broke college student already working 20h per week). For one of my apps I use payload as the CMS since it is the only cms which is real OSS without locking away core features like strapi and all the other cash-grab "freemium" CMS vendors do. Today the team released their cloud service starting at 35$ per month but I can get a VPS of similar specs at around 20$/month. So my question: Do you think self-hosting is generally worth 15 bucks a month? How much hours per month should I consider for self hosting when making my decision? Is just a backend really worth 35$? How much do you guys pay for your CMS/backend?

[AccountAccount1]

Yes.

A backend most definitely is worth 35 mere dollars. Though (you guessed it) it depends. It depends what you are going to do with it since maybe you can get a static site with a JSON shipped to the client and usually achieve similar results.

But, consider that by buying the cloud service you get: - database - probably a server with their hosted thingy (maybe a node.js server) - maybe some monitoring microservices as well

The question is then, - Does the time of setting the stuff up yourself, and the probable issues that come with it -- are they worth the marginal 15 dollars? This questions gets you the answer.

(Not to mention that some images of supposedly OSS microservices usually are different that their cloud service.)

[tihal]

Thanks for your feedback!

[tihal]

Oh I forgot to mention: my application is not very heavy on computation or storage, I want to use payload primarily to not mess up authentication and spend hours after hours writing CRUD methods

[pestatije]

Yes i'd pay $35/mo for a nice back end if i found one available