So, how much is this going to cost

To be fair, I already pay a significant amount for online services that don’t receive much attention, so, don’t judge me and remember I generally have no idea what I am doing (but I always end up figuring it out).

Now, that probably happens because I ended up hoarding products that I used with the agency, but now I only use them on my personal projects (and like two clients). Please keep this in mind when you see this setup; it’s not the most efficient.

For the sake of transparency, I will list all the costs of keeping this alive as it currently is, but I will also update over the weeks/months as I make changes and consolidate my expenses once and for all in a better setup.

I have three hosting accounts. Why do you need so many? You don’t.

1. One of them is a reseller, which is the one I used with the agency, it’s “cheap”, allows 30 cpanel accounts and it’s where I had hosted clients (still hold a couple plus some friends projects, cause, hey, I like to share) bought it with A2 hosting 6 years ago, now absorbed by hosting.com and since then horrible customer service, honestly do not do it.
2. Another one is my blog hosting. I wanted to separate it because it was my main source of income for a while, and, honestly, the place where I have it has hosted my websites since I was 16 years old.o (yes, you read that right), I think at this point I could be the longest lasting customer, that’s from when I REALLY had no idea what I was doing, the support there was awesome, the same lady (probably the owner), Amy, has replied to every ticket ever since. This is at e-starr, if you want a “family” support, I would totally recommend
3. The last one is a VPS I recently bought to experiment with N8N.

Could I simply use ONE VPS?
Yes, I know, but it was always a bit terrifying. I plan to make that move soon, as my reseller hosting is paid through Nov 2027. After I’ve reviewed everything, I’ll redesign the blog again (last time was 2021).

Because of all that, I also have an Elementor agency account (25 sites) for 199 USD a year. It was my main tool for building landing pages and WordPress websites until I had a better way, and I also shared the license with clients and friends. Sharing is caring.

And I also have like 14 domains… some of them because I liked the name, and I would rather buy them now and keep them until I have the time or will to bring those projects to life than having to fight about the name in the future. Reasonable? Not much, but like this, I also feel guilty for not bringing those projects to life every time I look at the yearly bill. We all have our questionable methods.

Now on the “coding” part:

When I started with Lovable after the free-credit rush, I was in a full-on manic episode (just exaggerating). I asked myself, wait, how much is this going to cost me if I actually have to pay for it?. Look, I earn well, but still, this had to be sustainable. Anything that would push the bill too far would simply not be a good idea, and, being honest, there’s a difference between building something and pushing it out there and maintaining it, so I had to account for that too.

I quickly realized the answer was: a lot.

I spent over 200€ on my first Lovable month and didn’t get very far.
If Lovable uses Claude, why couldn’t I? What I liked most about the Lovable experience was two things:

• The visual component of it
• The one-click Lovable Cloud install

I knew I could simply have a local view for the first, but I still did not know anything about the second one. So I researched a bit more.

I am happy I entered that crusade earlier; otherwise, it would have been a bigger mess. Once I understood what I had actually done there, I decided to move out of Lovable as quickly as possible. But the trick is, if you use their Lovable cloud, you own very little, so Supabase is in their project, and you are using all their API keys, which makes sense, simplicity vs control.

I spent a full afternoon setting up Supabase Cloud, properly connecting everything to GitHub, and learning to work with Claude code locally. It was fun as hell. By then, I already had 20 users registered, one active (besides me) but this already meant migrating would mean having to ask people to reset their passwords, and right that same weekend, I did a small publication on my 55 people TikTok account that got about 900 views about the tool, so, probably the worst moment to do this.

Anyway, going back to the costs. I paid 18€ for the first month of Claude and canceled my ChatGPT subscription. That month was March, when they also offered extra limits, so I never hit the ceiling. As soon as March ended, it was clear I had to pay for the Max version, 90€ a month (and I sometimes hit limits, so I might go to 180€). You might think it’s the same because eventually I will end up paying 200€ anyway, but it’s not. What I can do with those is not even comparable if I were paying for the wrapper.

So, Claude 90€ a month.

Other costs to consider

I have some of those projects using functions that use Gemini AI, also for image generation (this one pushes the bill) like Vestiari, so I have a limit of 10€ a month for now, I have also heard nightmare stories of people having their API either misused or leaked and facing a bill of 50K for Gemini, which, well, I do not want to pay, so thankfully Google Studio did create a way to set a limit. Far from there yet.

I am also considering paying for Supabase in the future, at 25 USD per month. I have also used Supabase Open Source on the VPS, and I will be hosting the projects I think have fewer problems there, while migrating or keeping in the cloud those that will require more complexity. Still not there yet, as their 2-project-free package covers it so far.

And that’s where we are as of April 2026.

Next steps, consolidating a bit

I guess I will finally do the move, buy a Hertzner VPS server, and move everything I have on the Reseller and my Blog to it, will probably keep the other VPS at Hostinger for now as it’s paid for a couple of years too, that’s hosting my Open source Supabase and my N8N.

This will also mean canceling the Elementor account. So I aim to reduce that yearly bill by about 400 USD. Will update when I do this as setting up the VPS as said, terrifies me, so once is done I will for sure have it as a milestone to celebrate.