I got tired of tutorials that hide the bill

Marc — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 07:10:34 +0000

Hello. I am Marc, and I write runcheap.dev — a small blog of executable technical guides.

Not "executable" as in "here is a snippet". As in: the commands, the config file, the deploy, and the monthly invoice at the end. I started writing it because I kept landing on tutorials that got me to a working app and then said "hosting starts at $4/month" and stopped.

Four dollars for what, exactly? How much RAM? Is the backup included? Does it survive a database that does not fit in memory?

So the rule on my blog is simple: every price carries the date I read it on the provider's own page, and every command was run somewhere before it was published. No affiliate links, no "as low as", no number I could not verify myself.

That rule has an awkward consequence, and it is the part I actually want to write about.

Last week I rewrote a comparison between two European hosting providers. One of them served me no prices at all — its storefront marked every plan as currently unavailable and showed no figures. The easy move was to quote the prices from an older version of my own article. Instead I wrote down what I saw: no prices served, model line changed, price it yourself on their calculator before you budget.

An empty cell with an explanation is more useful than a confident wrong number. It just does not look as good in a table.

What you will find here: cross-posts of the guides I publish on runcheap.dev, one at a time, with a canonical link back to the original. The cost breakdowns first — those are the ones people actually need and the ones nobody wants to write.

If a number here is wrong, tell me. It gets fixed and republished with a new verification date, not quietly deleted.

DEV Community: Marc

I got tired of tutorials that hide the bill