I'm curious about the monthly expenses involved in hosting a social media app that has features similar to Instagram. The app would allow users to upload photos, chat with each other, and create profiles. If I were to support around 1 million active users, how much should I expect to pay each month?
3 Answers
It really depends on how well you design and implement each feature. If you're worried about costs, starting with 1 million users might not be realistic, as most apps don't launch at that scale.
To be honest, it would definitely be a lot of money! You're looking at many tens of thousands of dollars just for cloud services. Building a platform with that many active users from scratch is quite a challenge.
So like $50k to $200k, right?
I'd say you're probably looking at between $50k and $200k per month, depending on how efficiently everything is managed. Costs can vary a lot based on your tech stack and server needs!
That's honestly a lot more than I expected!
Do you think it could be done cheaper with good planning?
What do you think are the biggest expenses in setting this up?