Stop Paying for Idle Containers: Smart Cost Management

Most container hosting bills include significant charges for containers that aren't doing anything useful. Development environments sitting idle overnight. Staging servers waiting for the next QA session. Demo apps that run 24/7 but get visited once a week.

The Hidden Cost of "Always On"

Let's do the math:

• Work 8 hours/day, 5 days/week
• Container runs 24/7 (168 hours/week)
• Actual productive usage: 40 hours/week
• Wasted: 128 hours/week (76%)

At typical rates ($0.02-0.05/hour), that's $11-28/month in pure waste per container.

Pause-Capable Hosting

SnapDeploy's approach is simple: containers can be paused when not in use. Paused containers don't count against your hours.

Same workflow with pause capability:

• Work 8 hours/day, pause outside work hours
• Actual billing: 160 hours/month
• Savings: 78%

Who Benefits Most

Freelancers and Agencies

Multiple client projects with dev/staging/demo environments.

• Traditional: 3 containers x 720 hours = $40-100/month per client
• With pause: 55 hours/month per client = under $5/month

Startups

Conserve runway by pausing non-production environments.

• Traditional: 2,160 hours/month (prod + staging + dev)
• With pause: 820 hours/month (62% savings)

Pause Strategies

Using the Pause Feature

1. Navigate to your container in the dashboard
2. Click "Stop" to pause (instant)
3. Click "Start" to resume (takes seconds)

Your data persists across pause/resume cycles. Database data, file system changes, and environment variables are all preserved.