Free mobile apps and backend infrastructure

[u0206397]

How do developers pay for the backend infrastructure while offering free mobile apps?

afaik, server hosting and storage costs money. Nothing is free.

 

[ashhong]

I used to host my backend on digitalocean, it is USD5 a month for the lowest tier and it is more than enough
sufficient for my traffic/load.

if you need more capacity than that, then i guess it is a happy problem since you actually having users using it. and you should be able to generate some revenue from it.

it is affordable and ads from within the app is sufficient to pay for it.

 

[Asphodeli]

How do developers pay for the backend infrastructure while offering free mobile apps?

afaik, server hosting and storage costs money. Nothing is free.

my mobile app is free and backed by google app engine - it used to cost me a bit of $ since 2013 (total cost should be about $150 or so USD per year - that's the price to pay for scalability) but since March of this year, the free tier has been revised to be much more "relaxed", thus I am effectively running it for free, forever (or until GAE shuts down)