How much does a server cost for app hosting?

Do you need a server for an app?

The short answer to this question is yes – you will need some sort of server space in order to serve application content to customers.

Unless your app doesn’t need to connect to the internet in any way (that means API integrations and user authentication, on top of sending and receiving data), you’ll need a server that can process this type of information. This is because most mobile apps are running as cloud applications, meaning they’re offloading those processes to external servers instead of running them locally. Depending on app functionality and your users, you may need more than one server to connect to as well, so consider this when researching mobile app hosting costs.

Aside from the servers used to serve content to app users, a server is also useful as a central repository for the app files by using a development tool such as Docker or Gitlab. These tools allow you to have precise version control of your software.

See Also: (Live Webinar) Meet ServerMania: Transform Your Server Hosting Experience

How much does an app hosting server cost?

An app hosting server can range in price from $2 per month (to share a server with other users) up to $500 or even $5000 per month, all based on your needs and usage. The server cost largely depends on factors that are unique to your app, such as the content being served to users, the number of active users, and projected growth. Let’s dive a little deeper into what makes up hosting costs.

When you’re determining your Application Server Hosting costs, consider these three questions:

1. How Much and What Kind of Data Do You Serve?

When you’re considering what kind of server you need for your app and the associated costs, you need to think about how much data you’re serving to users. Is there audio, video, or other large data being sent or received by users? Is your app data largely text-based or static in nature?

The larger the data being served, the more server CPU, memory, and disk space will be required, leading to increased costs. Determining the exact amount of server resources that your particular app will use is tricky. It’s generally best to set up a server and start sending users towards it. You can then approximate based on current and future growth.

You may also find it makes more sense to deploy multiple small servers like the E3 1240v3 for $70/month to spread out the load. This is especially useful when your app needs a lot of CPU power but not as much memory.

If you’re running a game engine or any kind of interactive product, you’ll need a server that’s not only spacious, but also fast. You will likely consider having servers spread out across various geographic areas. That’s one of the reasons why ServerMania has data centers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. This ensures the best performance for our clients.

2. How Much Data Do You Store?

Data storage is a critical factor in determining server costs for apps, with expenses scaling according to the volume and type of data stored. It’s not just about quantity; the nature of the data—be it user profiles, account information, transaction records, or dynamic content—also influences the choice of storage solutions and their cost implications.

• User Data: Storing extensive user profiles and activity logs can impact storage space quickly, which in turn will impact app server costs.
• Multimedia Content: High-resolution images, videos, and audio files are storage-intensive, requiring significant disk space.
• Transactional Data: E-commerce and business focused apps accumulate vast amounts of transactional data, necessitating secure and scalable storage solutions.
• Backups and Redundancy: Implementing data redundancy and regular backups for disaster recovery further multiplies storage requirements.

You may want to launch a beta version with a projected idea of how much data your users will be using. See how quickly you start to fill up server space and project the limits you can reach. Consider putting caps on how much storage you’ll allow for users.

3. How Many Active Users and What’s Your Projected Growth?

The server resources required for a mobile app are largely dependent on the number of active users and how much server CPU, RAM, and disk space each user will utilize on average. Again, this is best determined by setting up a server and measuring what the actual numbers are for the current users. You may find ways to minimize resource usage when you see the real numbers.

For any growing mobile application, it’s important to know that your server needs will likely change fairly often. The benefit of renting a server from ServerMania is that you don’t need to invest in server hardware that you will outgrow. You can add, remove, and change server hardware with zero up-front hardware costs. This allows your business to remain flexible and nimble.

That being said, if you want to have maximum server resources for an app that is serving a large number of users, you might want to look at servers like the Intel E5 2680v2 for $185/month. These servers deliver exceptional CPU power and have the configuration options to support large amounts of disk space, RAM, and network capacity.

Next Steps

You should have a general idea now of what a typical app server costs and some of the various factors that impact this cost, such as the app content, the number of active users, and the storage needs.

Want to get a more exact quote for your next app server, schedule a free consultation with us. One of our experts will review your needs and go over your options to ensure you have the proper features setup on your new app server.