6 teams that moved to bare metal
6 teams moved to bare metal. Most left AWS (4) or Heroku (1). The typical team cut 82% of its bill. Each team's old bill, running cost and net saving.
Half of the moves on this page are to physical servers rented by the month, not bought. Mynewsdesk, Isa Yeter and EVA Real Estate rent dedicated machines from Hetzner, while 37signals and OneUptime own theirs and place them in a colo. Four of the six teams left AWS. Mynewsdesk left Heroku, and Isa Yeter moved a Turkish software company off DigitalOcean.
37signals dominates the totals. DHH put the AWS bill at $3.2 million a year before and $1.3 million after, with the remainder being S3. OneUptime went from over $38,000 a month on EKS to colo costs of about $5,500 plus $150,000 of servers spread over five years. Mynewsdesk ran Kubernetes on Talos Linux on Hetzner machines, and Sidero, which makes Talos, reports its yearly bill falling from $200,000 to $20,000.
Every story gives a running cost, so the roughly $200,000 a month in savings is net. The cuts run from 55% to 90%. 37signals is at the low end, with both its servers and the colo counted in the new cost. The rented-server moves of Isa Yeter, from $1,432 to $233, and EVA Real Estate, from $1,300 to $250, both cut about 80%. The moves date from 2023 to 2026.
Written from these stories, updated Nov 2026. Numbers as each team reported them. How this ledger works
What they left for bare metal
Left AWS4 teams · median $18.4K/mo saved · cut 55%–87% of the bill
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 37signalsOwn Dell servers in a colo, run with Kamal · Dell The makers of Basecamp and HEY moved compute and managed services off AWS onto Dell servers in a colo. DHH put the AWS bill at $3.2M a year before and $1.3M after, with the remainder being S3. Running costs also spread $700K of servers over five years. | Oct 2024 | $267K/mo | $120K/mo | $147K/mo | 55% |
| OneUptimeBare metal in a colo with MicroK8s and Ceph OneUptime moved off EKS onto its own servers in a colo, running MicroK8s and Ceph. It reported an AWS bill of over $38K a month, colo running costs of about $5,500 a month, and $150K of servers it spreads over five years. | Oct 2023 | $38K/mo | $8,000/mo | $30K/mo | 79% |
| Simon HøibergBare metal Simon Høiberg moved more than 80% of a SaaS portfolio off AWS onto bare metal, taking the bill from about $7,800 a month to under $1,000. | Nov 2025 | $7,800/mo | $1,000/mo | $6,800/mo | 87% |
| EVA Real EstateDedicated Hetzner servers with Proxmox · Hetzner EVA Real Estate left AWS for dedicated Hetzner servers running Proxmox, with WZ-IT doing the work. WZ-IT reports the bill falling from $1,300 a month to $250. | Nov 2025 | $1,300/mo | $250/mo | $1,050/mo | 81% |
Left Heroku1 team · $15K/mo saved · cut 90% of the bill
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MynewsdeskTalos Kubernetes on Hetzner bare metal · Hetzner Mynewsdesk left Heroku for Kubernetes on Talos Linux on Hetzner bare metal, using its Reclaim the Stack setup. Sidero reports the yearly bill going from $200,000 to $20,000. | Jan 2024 | $16.7K/mo | $1,667/mo | $15K/mo | 90% |