Show HN: We Self-Hosted an App for $2/Month Using an M1 Mac Mini
Published in 2025, this chronicle by @RileyHilliard details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $2/Month.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
Are you hosting this on residential internet? I think that's probably the main drawback.
I host these types of things on a single vps - actually I have a few projects on one vps using different domains, so if you amortize the cost, it's probably $5/mo per - the total vps being around $20/mo although it has less compute than you'd have here, it is in a datacenter which I like.
They are mostly idle and you can run the webapp, nginx, and db all on the same host without any problem.
Cool. But have you heard of DOrch Starter: $1 hosting with $0 upfront cost: https://dorch.cloud ↗ We even created a project to demonstrate how much you could do with the $1 hosting package: https://hnbyai.prjct.cloud ↗
I experimented with hosting a production app from a $250 used M1 Mac Mini instead of using cloud services. Here's what I've learned:
Performance:
- 1,500-2,000 QPS achieved for SSR and API endpoints during load tests - 50% max CPU utilization hit during viral traffic (350k reddit post views/48h) - System Specs: M1 Mini w/ 8GB RAM, running headless Linux
Tech Stack:
- Docker containers optimized for ARM - Cloudflare Zero Trust Tunnel for connecting to the public internet - Grafana/Prometheus/Loki for monitoring - PostGIS for geographical queries - Custom ARM64 PostGIS image
Monthly Costs Comparison:
Cloud Hosting:
- Compute: $20-30/month - Database: $15-20/month - Storage: $5-10/month - Total: $40-60+/month
Self-Hosted M1 Mini:
- Hardware: $250 (one-time) - Electricity: $1-4/month - Total Reoccurring Costs: ~$2/month
Key Challenges:
- ARM compatibility for PostGIS (built custom image) - Monitoring implementation (self-hosted Grafana stack) - Third-party API costs during traffic spikes - Single point of failure (power outage took us down for a couple hours)
The setup handles our current scale well, with room for optimization. Containerized architecture means cloud migration is straightforward if/when needed. Happy to share implementation details or answer questions about any aspect of the setup. Full technical details: https://lab.workhub.so/running-your-app-on-pocket-change ↗