Subscribe or follow on X for updates when new posts go live.
As a solo founder, I’ve tried to keep my infrastructure simple, affordable, and flexible. My current deployment stack is built around DigitalOcean droplets managed by Terraform, with each application living in its own GitHub repo and deployed via GitHub Actions.
Excluding the cost of the domain and the DigitalOcean droplet itself, I’m running everything for ~$6/month.
Lately, I’ve been seeing posts from other solo devs and indie founders exploring their infrastructure setups, so I decided to dive in. I reached out to folks and compared notes. I wanted to see where my approach fits into the broader landscape and whether there are optimizations I’m missing. Below are the patterns I uncovered and some thoughts on where I go from here.
Here’s a rough breakdown of what I found after asking around. I grouped services into Free Options (at least for a generous tier) and Paid. This isn’t exhaustive, and I’ve generalized where appropriate for simplicity.
Nowadays there are plenty of free ways to host your app. I wish these were around when I was getting started.
In contrast, here’s a rough comparison of entry-level pricing for the paid options I mentioned earlier. Prices are for solo developer–friendly setups and may vary by region, features, or promotions.
| Service | Typical Entry Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | $14–$26 | Managed cloud hosting; resells DO/Linode/Vultr with value-added UI/support |
| DigitalOcean | $5–$7 | Basic droplet (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM); unmanaged |
| GCP | $0–$25 (free credits) | $300 credits for 90 days; f1-micro sometimes free in select regions |
| Hetzner | €4–€6 (~$4.50–$6.50) | High-performance VPS (2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM); great value but EU-centric |
| Hostinger | $3–$6 | Shared hosting; VPS starts around $5–$10 |
| Linode | $5–$10 | Similar pricing and model to DO (1 GB RAM tier is $5) |
| Railway | $5–$20 | Usage-based; $5 base includes some CPU/runtime/storage, then scales |
| VPS (general) | $3–$10 | Low-cost providers like Vultr, OVH, GreenCloud offer $3–$5/month options |
Best $/Performance: Hetzner, especially for EU-based deployments.
Most beginner-friendly: Cloudways, Hostinger for managed solutions.
CI/CD flexibility: DigitalOcean, Linode, and Railway integrate well with GitHub Actions or external deploy pipelines.
Hidden gem: Railway is great for combining app and DB hosting in a single interface with usage-based billing.
DigitalOcean: About 5% of the developers I contacted were using DigitalOcean with a similar self-hosted approach. Most of them ran their own databases, which is great to see. It means more folks are gaining DevOps literacy.
GitHub Actions: Only 2–3% of developers mentioned using GitHub Actions in their deployment flow. Even fewer tied it to infrastructure management like I do with Terraform. It’s a bit of a niche but gives you excellent repeatability.
Databases: Only about 10% mentioned using database-focused platforms like nHost or Directus. The majority either didn’t mention a database solution at all or just defaulted to Supabase.
Legacy No-Shows: Not a single person mentioned Heroku or Netlify, which is wild considering how dominant those platforms were 4–5 years ago. Their absence speaks to how quickly the landscape shifts.
This post didn’t even get into monitoring, analytics, alerting, or backups. There are things I handle separately and might dive into for a follow-up. If you’re running something cool or have an unusual deployment flow that’s working well for you, I’d love to hear about it.
Whether you’re bootstrapping your next SaaS, running a blog, or experimenting with side projects, the deployment landscape is wide open and getting more interesting every year.
If you’ve got a setup you love that wasn’t listed here, reach out. I’m always looking for new tricks to keep things lean and fast.