I spent three hours yesterday explaining to a friend why his hosting bill was $347 when he expected $25. His Next.js app got some traction on Reddit, traffic spiked for a few hours, and suddenly he owed more than his rent.
My friend Sarah runs an online marketplace in Lagos connecting freelancers with local businesses. She built it herself over six months, got some early users through word of mouth, and things were growing steadily. Everything seemed fine until she noticed something weird in her analytics.
Last month I did something probably unhealthy. I collected and analyzed 500 hosting bills from developers using major Platform-as-a-Service providers. I found them in Twitter threads, Reddit posts, Discord messages, anywhere people were complaining about unexpected costs.