Choose a hosting plan from workload evidence

Measure the workload shape

Monthly visits do not describe a workload. Record peak requests per second, response-time distribution, object sizes, database reads and writes, background jobs, storage growth, and regional demand. A small site with a bursty import can need more headroom than a steady publication with higher traffic.

Separate static delivery from application work. A CDN can absorb assets and cached pages while the origin handles authenticated or frequently changing requests.

Price the failure model

The cheapest plan is not cheap if recovery depends on an unavailable support queue. Decide acceptable data loss and recovery time, then verify how backups are created, retained, tested, and exported. High availability only helps when the application and data layer are designed to use it.

Include transfer, backup, logging, database, build, support, and overage costs in the comparison.

• Document the recovery point objective.
• Document the recovery time objective.
• Confirm restore access without the primary account.
• Estimate a normal and a peak month.

Match complexity to the operator

Managed services trade some control for maintained infrastructure and clearer responsibility. A self-managed server can be economical for an experienced operator, but patching, monitoring, backup testing, and incident response still consume time.

Choose the simplest platform that satisfies the workload and recovery requirements. Preserve an export path so the site is not trapped by a proprietary feature.