The hosting markup problem
What they charge vs. what it costs
Performance and growth shouldn't be a success tax. Here's what managed hosts actually pay for the infrastructure they resell.
Compared at 2,000-5,000 daily visitors (shared resources)
Kinsta
$115/mo
Business 1 (100K visits)
Shared resources, infra cost ~$8 ~14x
WP Engine
$96/mo
Growth (100K visits)
Shared resources, infra cost ~$8 ~12x
Rocket.net
$80/mo
Growth (250K visits)
Shared resources, infra cost ~$5 ~16x
Cloudways
$54/mo
4GB DigitalOcean (self-managed WP)
Infra cost: $24 2.3x
GridPane + VPS
$98/mo
$50 panel + $48 VPS (fully DIY)
Infra cost: $48, you manage it 2x (no support)
WooThatsFast
$58/mo
Dedicated 4 vCPU, 8 GB, NVMe, yours
Server: $48 + margin: $10 1.2x
All competitors compared at their plan handling 2,000-5,000 daily visitors. Managed host infra costs based on GCP/AWS committed-use pricing with container density. They get shared resources. You get a dedicated server. GridPane requires full self-management.