Why Your Hosting Bill Keeps Growing (And What to Do About It)
You check your email and there it is again—another hosting bill. Except this time it’s £2,400 instead of the £1,800 you paid last month. And the month before that, it was £1,600.
Every month, the number creeps up. Nobody on your team can explain why. Your developer says “it’s just cloud hosting, it scales with usage.” But your traffic hasn’t doubled. Your site hasn’t gotten twice as busy. So why is the bill going up?
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. I audit hosting costs for UK businesses, and 9 out of 10 are overpaying by at least 20%.
Here’s what’s actually happening—and what you can do about it.
The Problem: “Cloud Hosting” is Designed to Grow Your Bill
When you moved to “the cloud” (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), your hosting company probably said something like:
“It scales automatically! You only pay for what you use!”
Sounds great, right? Except here’s what they didn’t tell you:
Cloud platforms are set up to default to “bigger is better.” When your site gets busy, they automatically upgrade you to more expensive resources. But when traffic drops? They rarely downgrade you back.
It’s like a taxi that speeds up when you hit traffic, but then keeps going 80mph even after the traffic clears.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Here’s what I typically find when I audit a UK business paying £2,000/month for hosting:
- £500-600/month – Resources running 24/7 that are only needed during business hours
- £300-400/month – Oversized databases that are 10x bigger than needed
- £200-300/month – Old test servers nobody remembers creating (still running, still charging)
- £150-250/month – Duplicate backups and storage nobody’s monitoring
- £100-200/month – Premium features that were enabled “just in case” but never used
Total waste: £1,250-1,750 per month
That’s £15,000-21,000 per year for resources you don’t need and features you don’t use.
Why This Happens (It’s Not Your Fault)
You’re a business owner, not a cloud infrastructure expert. And the people who are experts—your developers or the agency that built your site—aren’t incentivised to keep your costs down.
Here’s why:
1. Developers Over-Provision “Just to Be Safe”
When your developer set up your hosting, they probably thought:
“I’ll give them plenty of resources so the site never goes down. Better safe than sorry.”
So they set you up with:
- Servers that can handle 10,000 visitors/hour (you get 200)
- Database storage for millions of products (you have 500)
- Premium backup plans “just in case”
It’s like buying a 10-bedroom mansion when you only need a 3-bed house—yes, you’ll never run out of space, but you’re paying for 7 empty bedrooms every month.
2. Nobody’s Watching the Meter
Cloud hosting bills are complicated. Really complicated. Your monthly AWS bill could have 200+ line items, each charging you for something different:
- EC2 instances (servers)
- RDS databases
- S3 storage
- Data transfer
- Load balancers
- Snapshots
- CloudWatch monitoring
- And on and on…
Without an expert reviewing this monthly, costs just keep creeping up. A test server left running here, an oversized database there—suddenly you’re paying £2,000/month instead of £800.
3. Your Hosting Provider Wants You to Overspend
This is uncomfortable, but true: Cloud providers make more money when you spend more.
They’re not going to email you and say:
“Hey, we noticed you’re paying for resources you don’t use. Want us to help you spend less?”
That’s not how they’re incentivised. Their job is to sell you more cloud services, not help you optimise costs.
What This is Costing You
Let’s do some quick maths:
Current situation:
- Monthly hosting: £2,000
- Typical waste: 25-35%
- Wasted per month: £500-700
- Wasted per year: £6,000-8,400
Over 3 years:
- That’s £18,000-25,000 literally thrown away on resources you’re not using.
Now ask yourself: What could you do with an extra £6,000-8,000 per year?
- Hire a part-time marketing person
- Run proper ad campaigns
- Actually grow your business
Instead, you’re paying AWS/Google/Azure for servers that sit idle 80% of the time.
The 5 Most Common Wastes We Find
Every business is different, but here are the big ones I see repeatedly:
1. Always-On Resources That Should Be Scheduled
Your development/testing servers don’t need to run at 3am on Sunday. Turn them off outside business hours and save 60-70% on those resources.
Typical savings: £200-400/month
2. Oversized Databases
Your developer provisioned a database that can handle 1 million transactions per second. You do 1,000 per day. You’re paying for 1,000x more capacity than you need.
Typical savings: £300-500/month
3. Forgotten Test Environments
Someone spun up a test server 18 months ago. The project finished. The server is still running. Nobody remembers it exists.
Typical savings: £150-300/month per forgotten server
4. Excessive Backups
You’re keeping daily backups for 90 days. You probably only need 30 days. And definitely don’t need hourly backups of your test database.
Typical savings: £100-200/month
5. Wrong Instance Types
You’re using “general purpose” servers when “burstable” or “compute-optimised” would be 40% cheaper for your actual usage pattern.
Typical savings: £200-400/month
What You Should Do About It
You have three options:
Option 1: Do Nothing
Keep paying £2,000/month and watch it creep to £2,500, then £3,000. Over the next 3 years, you’ll waste £20,000+ on resources you don’t need.
Option 2: Try to Figure It Out Yourself
Spend 20-30 hours learning cloud pricing, auditing your bill, working out what each line item does, researching optimisation strategies, and hoping you don’t accidentally break something.
(Most business owners don’t have 30 spare hours, and the last thing you want is to take down your website trying to save money.)
Option 3: Get an Expert to Audit It
Someone who does this for a living looks at your setup, finds all the waste, gives you a clear report with specific actions, and helps implement the changes safely.
This is what I do. And it pays for itself in weeks, not months.
What a Hosting Cost Audit Looks Like
Here’s exactly what I do:
Week 1: Full Infrastructure Audit
- Review your entire cloud setup (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.)
- Analyse 3 months of billing data to spot patterns
- Identify every resource you’re paying for and what it actually does
- Find waste, over-provisioning, and forgotten resources
Week 2: Written Report & Action Plan
You get a detailed report showing:
- Current costs broken down by service
- Every waste item with specific £ amounts
- Quick wins you can implement immediately
- Medium-term optimisation recommendations
- Long-term cost prevention strategies
Implementation Support:
- We can implement the changes for you, or
- I give your developer clear instructions to do it safely
- 30 days of support to ensure everything runs smoothly
The Numbers That Matter
Investment: £797 (one-time)
Typical results:
- £300-700/month in immediate savings
- £3,600-8,400/year saved
- Audit pays for itself in 4-10 weeks
- Savings continue every month, forever
ROI: 4.5-10.5x in the first year alone
If you’re currently paying £2,000/month and we find £500/month in waste (which is typical), here’s what happens:
- Month 1: £500 saved (£297 net after paying for audit)
- Month 2: £500 saved
- Month 3: £500 saved
- By month 12: £6,000 saved (minus £797 audit = £5,203 profit)
- Year 2: £6,000 saved (pure profit)
- Year 3: £6,000 saved (pure profit)
Total savings over 3 years: £17,203
For a £797 investment.
Real Example (Anonymous Client)
Before:
- Monthly hosting: £2,300
- Random spikes up to £2,800
- No visibility into what they were paying for
- Developer said “that’s just what it costs”
After Our Audit:
- Shut down 5 forgotten test servers: -£350/month
- Rightsized production database: -£280/month
- Scheduled dev environments (off at night/weekends): -£220/month
- Fixed excessive backup retention: -£140/month
- Switched instance types: -£180/month
New monthly cost: £1,130
Total savings: £1,170/month (51% reduction)
Annual savings: £14,040
The audit cost them £797. They saved £14,040 in year one. That’s an 18x ROI.
Common Objections (And Honest Answers)
“Our developer already optimised our hosting.”
Great! Then an audit will confirm that and you’ll have peace of mind. But in my experience, developers optimise for performance and reliability, not cost. They want to make sure your site never goes down, even if it means over-provisioning resources. Nothing wrong with that—but it’s not their job to optimise your spend.
“We don’t have time for this right now.”
You don’t have to do anything. I do the audit, give you the report, and can implement everything for you. Total time required from you: 1 hour (initial call to understand your business).
“What if something breaks?”
Every change is documented, tested in staging first (if you have one), and easily reversible. I’ve done 50+ of these audits. I’ve never broken a production site. If something did go wrong, we roll back immediately.
“Can’t our developer do this?”
Possibly, if they have cloud cost optimisation expertise. But here’s the thing: your developer is focused on building features and keeping the site running. Reviewing 200+ line items on an AWS bill every month isn’t their priority. And honestly, it shouldn’t be—their time is better spent on your product.
The Bottom Line
Every month you wait is another £500-700 (potentially £6,000-8,400/year) you’re throwing away on hosting you don’t need.
The audit costs £797 once. The savings continue forever.
Quick maths:
- Audit cost: £797
- Typical monthly savings: £500
- Pays for itself in: 6 weeks
- Year 1 net profit: £5,203
- Year 2 net profit: £6,000
- Year 3 net profit: £6,000
- 3-year total: £17,203
Or you can keep paying £2,000/month and hope the bill stops growing (spoiler: it won’t).
What Happens Next
If you’re interested in a hosting cost audit, here’s what happens:
1. Book a free 15-minute call – We discuss your current setup and whether an audit makes sense
2. Week 1: I audit your infrastructure – Full analysis of your hosting setup and costs
3. Week 2: You get the report – Detailed breakdown with specific actions and expected savings
4. Implementation – We fix it (or your developer does, with clear instructions)
5. 30 days support – Make sure everything runs smoothly and savings materialise
Investment: £797 (fixed price, no surprises)
Typical ROI: 4.5-10.5x in first year
Money-back guarantee: If we don’t find at least £200/month in savings, full refund
Ready to Stop Overpaying?
Book a Free 15-Minute Assessment Call
Or email me: alan@alanops.com
Common questions:
- “How long does it take?” – 2 weeks total
- “Will it break anything?” – No, everything is tested and reversible
- “What if you don’t find savings?” – Full refund, no questions asked
- “Do you work with [AWS/Azure/Google Cloud]?” – Yes, all of them
P.S. – The average UK business I audit is wasting £6,000-8,000 per year on hosting. That’s £500-700 per month you could be spending on growing your business instead of over-provisioned cloud resources. The audit costs £797 once and pays for itself in 6 weeks. After that, the savings are pure profit.
Still on the fence? Ask yourself: “Can I afford to waste another £6,000 this year?”