Ask HN: How do u host your SaaS technically, and what % of revenue doesit take?

1 points by umen 1 year ago | 3 comments

Hello all, I am doing research on how you host your SaaS, including what hosting and third-party services you use. How much percentage of your revenue does it take? No need to publish your revenue, just a high-level percentage of your earnings. I am very confused about what to use for hosting a web app. I know it all depends on various factors, but I would love to hear tips and tricks and also receive resources I can read and learn from. Thanks!

harel 1 year ago |

Maybe this will unconfuse: It doesn't matter as long as you can scale with your operation both in capacity and financially. That means that if you decide to use AWS, Google cloud, Azure, Oracle Cloud (hihi) or bare metal on Hetzner, you need to start small to handle the initial capacity and then some. But you also need to make sure that you can scale up or sideways, and that you plan and know how this will work and how much it will cost. Then your infra growth is tied in to your revenue. More users == more money == more infra.

And because you asked, I've used AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle Cloud (hihi) and Bare Metal (but not on Hetzner). All for different projects, different requirements etc. And all followed that rule - Grow with your actual growth/revenue.

umen 1 year ago | |

i was expecting for real life examples

harel 1 year ago | | |

Real life:

AWS using ECS/ECR to start containers in an auto scaling group and behind a load balancer for an API layer. Similar setup for background workers. Starting with 2 instances for API, more for redundancy and ramping up as load increases. One or two smaller EC2 instance can handle the UI (SPA application). Database on RDS when funds increased, but initially just on another EC2 instance to save costs. Opting for running own services on EC2 was cheaper than managed.