As far as cost, 200/month is nothing, but those are not the numbers we hear about when things spiral out of controll due to a ddos or sudden surge in popularity.
We serve thousands of customers off Supabase for $250/month including PITR. It’s a STEAL. Technical support is also responsive and knowledgeable. Outside of the auth SSR upgrade, it’s technically also been great to work with. Supabase is some of the best value we get from any vendor.
If you hire someone full time, you can do the math that way.
But the market rate for a freelance midlevel US-based engineer would be about double per hour what you'd pay a full-time employee of the same level, to account for taxes/PTO/health care/etc.
Would be happy to find something at half that, but there’s no work right now. Lots of ghost jobs and even upwork has twenty+ applicants fighting over $30/hr scraps.
I’m assuming that’s the fully burdened rate, i.e., salary, benefits, taxes, overhead, profit, etc that employees never see, even though they should.
I remember getting a sheet from an employer early in my career that fully broke down the cost of benefits and taxes and showed me the full cost of just my employment, not including overhead, profit, etc. it was rather eye opening because although I kid of knew it from accounting and finance, it never really impacted me quite as much before seeing the numbers.
If the system didn't structure it that way, everyone would know the numbers and protest. As it is people pay up for the most part, they even defend the concept of taxing, supposedly going to public services.
With Vercel/Netlify, you're paying for ease of use. For a lot of people, that tradeoff is worth it. Not everything can be free.