I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

https://stevehanov.ca/blog/how-i-run-multiple-10k-mrr-companies-on-a-20month-tech-stack

How I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack

Steve Hanov's Blog

There are zero reasons to limit yourself to 1GB of RAM. By paying $20 instead of $5 you can get at least 8gb of RAM. You can use it for caches or a database that supports concurrent writes. The $15 difference won’t make any financial difference if you are trying to run a small business.

Thinking about on how to fit everything on a $5 VPS does not help your business.

$15 is not exactly zero, is it? If you don't need more than 1GB, why pay anything for more than 1GB?

I recall running LAMP stacks on something like 128MB about 20 years ago and not really having problems with memory. Most current website backends are not really much more complicated than they were back then if you don't haul in bloat.

It is. With 10k MRR it represents 0.15% of the revenue. Having the whole backend costing that much for a company selling web apps is like it’s costing zero.
You probably don't make 10k MMR on day one. If you make many small apps, it can make sense to learn how to run things lean to have 4x longer runway per app.
There’s a happy medium and $5 for 1GB RAM just isn’t it.
Not a very strong argument now is it?

if the project already has positive revenue then arguably the ability to capture new users is worth a lot, which requires acceptable performance even when a big traffic surge is happening (like a HN hug of attention)

if the scalability is in the number of "zero cost" projects to start, then 5 vs 15 is a 3x factor.

Be sure to inform the author of the article who is currently making money on his 1GB VPS that he hasn’t found a happy medium
Saving 15 USD on 10k+ USD MMR is ridiculous.
Given how much revenue depends on the experience of a web app and loading times, I’d be happy to pay 100$ a month on that revenue if I don’t have to sacrifice a second of additional loading time no matter how clever I was optimizing it.
Saving 15 USD on 0 USD MMR while still building the business is priceless. Virtually infinite runway.