A development fee pays for the work of building your platform. Once it is live, it also uses services that keep it available, store its data and deliver messages. Those services have their own plans, limits and bills.
Some projects can start within free allowances. Others need paid services from launch. The useful starting point is a clear list of what your platform uses, who pays for it and what could change the bill.
There are three kinds of cost to understand
Development: the agreed work to design, build, test and launch the software, or to add a defined set of improvements.
Running the platform: the domain, infrastructure and external services used by the software. Charges can be monthly, annual or based on usage.
Ongoing development and maintenance: a developer’s time for updates, investigation, fixes and new features after handover.
A proposal should explain which of these are included. If hosting is part of a package, ask what the package covers, which limits apply and what happens when it ends. Paying to have an email service connected does not cover that service’s future bills.
The building blocks behind a working platform
Your product may use several of the following. Some providers bundle multiple parts into one plan, and some features need no separate service. We should choose the parts your product actually needs.
Domain name
This is the address people visit, such as yourcompany.com. Registration needs renewing, commonly each year. Check the renewal price as well as any introductory offer. A domain name gives you an address; hosting and a business email inbox may be separate purchases.
Hosting and application compute
Hosting serves your website and runs the code behind actions such as signing in, placing an order or generating a report. Depending on the provider, charges may reflect a fixed server, processing time, requests or data sent to visitors. More demanding work can cost more even with the same number of users.
Database
A database holds records such as accounts, bookings, orders and messages. Its costs can depend on stored data, processing capacity and features such as recovery history. A hosted database service may bill separately from the service running your app; Neon’s pricing page shows one example of compute and storage allowances.
Files, images and video
Uploads need storage, and serving or processing them can also create charges. Keep track of file sizes, how long files are kept, and how often people access them. For example, Cloudflare R2 pricing separates storage and operation charges. Free data transfer still leaves storage and operations to pay for.
Application emails and business inboxes
Password resets, booking confirmations and receipts are messages sent by your software. An email delivery service handles those sends. A business inbox, where your team reads and replies to mail, is a separate function and may have its own subscription.
Sending limits can apply per day as well as per month. Resend’s pricing page is an example of a provider with different allowances across plans.
Payments and other integrations
A payment integration lets your software work with a payment provider. The provider’s transaction fees are separate from the work of building that integration. Rates and availability depend on the provider, account and payment method; use its current pricing for your business.
Other features may add usage charges: SMS verification, maps, search, AI requests, video calls or real-time messaging. Their cost depends on the services selected and how the feature is used. They belong in the running-cost discussion before we commit to the feature.
Backups, monitoring and supporting services
Backups, error reporting, monitoring and test environments can be included in a plan or billed separately. Check what is included and whether it meets your product’s needs. Setting up a monitoring service and paying someone to respond to its alerts are separate responsibilities.
A free tier is an allowance to plan around
Free plans can be useful when their limits and conditions fit the project. Check the allowance, whether it resets, and what happens when it is exhausted. A trial credit that expires is different from an ongoing free tier.
Also check whether the plan allows your intended business use. For example, Vercel’s Hobby documentation describes that plan as restricted to non-commercial, personal use.
Depending on the provider and plan, reaching a limit can mean paused service, rejected requests, an upgrade requirement or additional usage charges. Confirm the actual behaviour for each service. A demo that runs on free plans says little about the budget once customers arrive.
Estimate activity, not just registered users
Take a booking platform as an example. If the application sends one customer confirmation and one staff notification for each of 1,000 bookings, that creates 2,000 email sends. Another 200 password-reset messages bring the example to 2,200 sends. Reminders, cancellations and other notifications would add to that total.
The timing matters too. A campaign can concentrate activity into one day, so a monthly allowance alone may not tell you whether the service will cope. For storage, 10,000 uploads averaging 5 MB represent roughly 50 GB before extra copies or processed versions.
These are workload examples, not a price quote. To estimate the bill, apply the selected providers’ current allowances and rates to the expected activity. Two platforms with the same number of registered users can have very different workloads.
A worked example with list prices
Here is the booking platform above, priced with the providers linked in this guide. It assumes one developer seat, a small database that sleeps when idle, about 2,200 emails and 50 GB of files a month. The figures are each provider’s published list prices on 15 October 2026, in US dollars and before taxes.
Domain: a .com usually renews for around $10 to $20 a year, so roughly $1 to $2 a month.
Hosting on Vercel Pro: $20 a month per developer seat, which includes $20 of usage credit. A small booking app is likely to stay within that credit.
Database on Neon’s Launch plan: no monthly minimum, with compute at $0.106 per CU-hour and storage at $0.35 per GB-month. About 30 CU-hours and 2 GB of data comes to roughly $4.
Files on Cloudflare R2: the first 10 GB are free, then $0.015 per GB-month, so 50 GB costs about $0.60. Downloads to visitors are free.
Email on Resend: the free plan covers 3,000 emails a month but only 100 a day. A busy booking day or a reminder campaign can pass that, so plan for the Pro plan at $20 a month.
That puts this example at roughly $45 to $50 a month, or around $25 if the email volume really does stay within the free plan. Payment provider fees come on top and grow with your sales. Your own figure will differ with traffic, file sizes and the providers we choose; the useful part is seeing which line moves when activity grows.
Ask for a running-cost breakdown before launch
For each service, write down:
What it does and why the platform needs it.
Who owns the account, receives billing notices and pays the provider.
The selected plan, any base charge and when it renews.
The usage assumptions behind the estimate: sends, stored files, processing or other relevant units.
Any free allowance, trial expiry and behaviour when a limit is reached.
Available spending controls and who can approve an upgrade.
Separate monthly subscriptions, annual renewals and variable charges in that breakdown. Confirm the billing currency and whether the displayed prices include applicable taxes. Keep provider bills separate from your developer’s maintenance or feature-work fees.
An alert tells you to investigate spending. Ask which controls can actually stop or limit usage, and what stopping it would mean for customers. Set expectations for who watches the alerts and how additional spending is approved.
Keep ownership and handover clear
I recommend keeping the domain and service accounts under your business’s control, with your developer invited to the access they need. Provider bills can then go directly to you. If you choose a managed arrangement instead, agree on the charges, access and handover terms in writing.
The handover should include a service inventory, renewal details and billing contacts. Turning off a service can affect the product: an unpaid email service may interrupt messages, while an expired domain may stop customers reaching the site. Someone needs to own those renewals after the development work ends.
Start with what the product needs
A sensible setup can use bundled services, eligible free allowances and paid plans where they are needed. Add infrastructure when there is a reason for it. Self-hosting can also be an option, but the server still needs operating, updating, backing up and recovering when something fails. Include that work when comparing costs.
During planning, I can help identify the services and usage assumptions so we can discuss the running costs alongside the build. The provider links above were checked on 15 October 2026; check their current plans when making a decision.
If you are preparing a project, send me a brief with the main features and the activity you expect. For the ongoing work around those services, see my guide to maintenance after launch.