Light Cloud Idle-Cost Ladder

Light Cloud bills containers at zero minimum instances, so an idle client app stops accruing compute while its managed Postgres stays provisioned. That gap is the agency margin lever. A main-street shop on the Lite plan at $5/month runs a server-rendered frontend, one shared database, and Nano or Micro sizes that scale to zero overnight; the agency charges a $75 to $150 monthly hosting retainer and keeps the spread. The ladder breaks when a client needs always-on instances, which start at the Starter plan at $19/month and remove the idle savings entirely. Before quoting a retainer, check whether the workload tolerates cold starts. Traffic that arrives in bursts and can wait a few seconds sits at the bottom of the ladder; checkout flows and internal tools that demand instant response sit at the top, where the margin is thin and the retainer must be priced on support hours instead.