BoringPush vs a Stack of Subscriptions: The Maths

Four bills to build one product

You set out to build one product. Then the tools arrive: one for sign-in, one for hosting, one for the blog, one for uploads.

Each looks small. Together they are a second product, and it bills every month.

Free tiers hide this at first, which is the point of a free tier. This post is about the day you outgrow them.

The paid entry tier of four common tools

These are first paid plans, not top plans. Every company here also has a free plan, and each price comes from its own page, checked on 2026-10-20.

Once you outgrow the free plans, that is $83 a month, or $996 a year, whether or not the product has found its customers.

The same kit, one price

BoringPush is $199 once. The license reads "One-time payment · Lifetime updates · Unlimited projects."

It runs on a server you rent. A DigitalOcean Basic Droplet with 1 GiB of memory is $6 a month, which is $72 a year. Your laptop does the build, and the server only runs the app, so a small box is enough.

Year one is $199 plus $72, which is $271.

Year one, year two, year three

The BoringPush column below is cumulative: the $199 is paid once, and the server costs $72 a year. Hold that server price and watch the gap grow.

Prices move, and these are the paid entry tiers on the dates above. Check them again before you decide.

What each bill actually buys

Hosting. Vercel Pro lifts the non-commercial limit on Hobby and adds $20 of usage credit. BoringPush deploys your Next.js app to your own server with bp deploy, and bp rollback --yes puts the last version back. See Free Vercel Alternative.

Sign-in. Auth0 Essentials prices by monthly active users. BoringPush gives Google and email-link sign-in, with the user records in your own database. See Free Auth0 Alternative.

Blog. Ghost Starter is a hosted blog with its own editor and login. BoringPush turns Markdown files into posts on your domain, with RSS, a sitemap and FAQ markup. See Free Ghost Alternative.

Uploads. UploadThing stores files for you in its account. BoringPush sends them from the browser straight to your own R2 or S3 bucket, so your server never carries the bytes. See Free UploadThing Alternative.

Analytics. Mixpanel charges by event volume once you pass its free plan. BoringPush records visits and orders in the same app, so revenue sits next to the channel that brought it. See Free Mixpanel and Google Analytics Alternative.

Scheduled jobs. Vercel Pro allows a job every minute. Your own server does the same with no per-run charge, which matters for a check that runs all day. See Free Vercel Cron Alternative.

Deploy and CI. GitHub Actions gives 2,000 free minutes a month on private repos with GitHub Free. BoringPush's deploy runs on your laptop, needs no runner, and checks the live site before it calls the release done. See Free GitHub Actions Alternative.

What a platform cut costs on top

The four subscriptions above do not sell anything. If you also sell a product, Gumroad's direct-sale fee is 10% plus $0.50, checked on 2026-10-21.

Say you sell ten copies at $29. That is $290 before fees.

On each sale the fee is $2.90 plus $0.50, or $3.40, so ten sales cost $34. You keep $256 before your payment provider's own fee.

This is an example, not a forecast. The shape is the point: a percentage fee grows with your success, and a one-time license does not.

BoringPush takes no cut. Checkout runs on the payment account you connect, and the seller keeps the rest minus that provider's fee. See Free Gumroad Alternative.

Know this first

• The $83 is the paid entry tier of four tools, on the dates given. Each one has a free tier, so a small app can spend less for a while.
• The server is yours to run. You handle updates, the disk and backups, and a $6 box is one machine, not a global network.
• Some platform features go away: a preview link for every pull request, edge locations in many countries, and a managed dashboard for uploaded files.
• The $6 does not include a domain or an email service. Those cost the same on either path.

Why BoringPush is the way to do this

Each of those tools does its one job well. The cost is not only money. It is four dashboards, four bills and four places your data can live.

BoringPush does all of those jobs in one kit, for one price. Sign-in, store, blog, analytics, uploads, jobs and deploy are already there, on one server, in one app.

You pay once, you own the code, and the updates keep coming. That is the whole case.

FAQ

Is $83 a month really what a starter stack costs?

It is the sum of four paid entry tiers: Vercel Pro at $20, Auth0 Essentials at $35 for 500 users, Ghost Starter at $18 and UploadThing's 100GB plan at $10. All four were checked on the dates in the table, and all four have free tiers below them.

What if I stay on the free tiers?

Then you may pay nothing for a while, and that is fair. The free plans carry limits: Vercel Hobby is for non-commercial use, Auth0 Free has no MFA, and Supabase free projects pause after a week idle. The maths above starts when those limits bite.

Does the $199 include updates?

Yes. The license says one-time payment, lifetime updates and unlimited projects. There is no renewal date.

What does the $6 server not include?

A domain and an email service. You also look after the machine: updates, the disk and backups. The server is the only recurring bill BoringPush adds.

Can I move to Supabase or MongoDB later?

Yes. Change one setting and the same app runs on either, with the data moved first. Sign-in, the blog and the rest keep working.

Do I still pay payment fees?

Yes. Stripe, Dodo Payments or Lemon Squeezy charge their own fee on each sale. BoringPush takes no percentage.

Keep reading

• Every Tool BoringPush Replaces, and What It Costs — the whole stack in one table
• Free Vercel Alternative: Host Next.js on a $6 VPS — the server this maths runs on
• Free Gumroad Alternative: Sell From Your Own Site — the fee that scales with every sale

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