«We buy cars for $50,000 to look successful, but fill them with the cheapest gas to “save” 50 hryvnias. Spoiler: this is not about cars»
A situation that made me think
Recently, I found myself in a situation that seemed like it should have stopped surprising me long ago. But no — even after 17+ years in development, such moments still make me stop and think.
A company orders serious development work. Significant budget, large-scale project. We build a product: well-thought-out architecture, quality UI, good performance. The client is satisfied, accepts the work, shakes hands.
And then comes the question of an additional infrastructure solution. Something small, but important for security and business autonomy. The price — negligible compared to the main project.
And then it starts: “Why so expensive?”, “Can we split the payment?”, “Maybe we should just rent a ready-made service?”
Interesting moment. Serious investment in a platform — no questions. But then the cost of quality engine oil triggers an hour of discussion. As if sunflower oil instead of motor oil is a normal alternative, “because it’s cheaper this month”.
And this is not an isolated case. This is a pattern I’ve observed for years.
Why this happens: the psychology of a renter
Behind this lies a classic mental trap that occurs in business all the time: renter psychology.
It’s psychologically easier for a manager to sign the company up for a SaaS service where they’ll pay $50-100 per month. Forever. Over a year it adds up to $1000+. Over two years — $2000. But these are “operational expenses” — they’re unnoticeable, spread out over months, don’t require a decision.
The alternative is your own infrastructure. An asset. You pay once for setup — and then the system works for you. The cost of server maintenance — pennies compared to any subscription.
But the paradox is that a one-time investment — even negligible — scares more than eternal subscription servitude. It’s fear of responsibility. A rental is “someone else’s”: if it breaks — they’re to blame. Your own is “ours”: you have to maintain it. And somehow this responsibility for your own turns out to be psychologically more expensive than real money.
This is one facet of the problem — saving in the wrong place. But there’s another — when a person is willing to pay but not willing to let a specialist do their work.
“Fix the car, but don’t open the hood”
Another case. A call from a new client. Says that… ChatGPT recommended me to her. Seriously. Artificial intelligence recommended me as a specialist. We live in interesting times.
The task is simple: there are two websites, they’re 8 years old, need fixing, updating. Standard procedure in such cases — a support contract with a confidentiality clause. Protection for both the contractor and the client.
And then: “I won’t give you access to hosting. And I’ll only give you admin access as an editor, not as an administrator. Start with that”.
Imagine: you came to a car repair shop and tell the mechanic: “Fix my engine. But don’t open the hood. And I won’t give you the car keys. Start with that”.
Without administrative access to the website, it’s physically impossible to update plugins, clear cache, or fix critical errors. This is not a matter of trust — it’s a matter of technical possibility.
I understand where this comes from. Previous experience with another developer, fear of “what if they break something”, distrust of the new person. These are human emotions, and they’re absolutely valid. That’s exactly why contracts, confidentiality clauses, business registry extracts, and professional reputation exist.
But when fear overrides common sense so much that a specialist can’t work — that’s not risk management. That’s no results.
By the way, those websites really were from the last decade. And when the conversation shifted from patching the old to creating something new — the tone changed completely. Because it’s not about fear anymore. It’s about possibilities.
Both of these stories are different manifestations of the same problem. Someone saves on infrastructure, someone saves on trust. But the root is one: not understanding the difference between price and value. And if you look closely — this pattern is everywhere.
“Website for 200 bucks”: why is all Instagram flooded with this advertising?
Open Instagram. The feed is full of ads: “Website turnkey — $200”, “Landing in 3 days — 5000 hrn”, “Online store from $150”. Promises of fast, cheap, and beautiful — three words that never go together in development.
Why does this advertising work? Because it plays on the same psychology. A person sees $200 and thinks: “Wow, why pay someone $3000 if I can get the same thing for two hundred?” And indeed — on the surface, the result might look similar. For the first two weeks.
And then reality sets in. The website is made on the cheapest template — one of thousands identical ones. The code is not optimized. Pages load in 8 seconds — Google sees this and hides the website so deep that even the owner can’t find it. No SEO optimization. No strategy. But it looks nice.
After half a year, the owner understands: the website exists, but zero clients come from it. And they go to a normal specialist. Who looks at this “$200 website” and says: “It’s easier to rebuild from scratch than to fix this”. Bottom line: $200 + $3000 = $3200. Savings.
Such websites come for “treatment” to experienced developers regularly. And the picture is always the same: the business lost time, money, and — worst of all — faith that online presence even works. “We already made a website, it didn’t help”. No. You didn’t make one. You bought the illusion of a website.
Where price comes from: from an internet cafe to M3 Max
When a client sees an invoice, they see a number. Just a figure. And they compare it to other numbers — from Instagram ads, from freelance marketplaces, from “I have a friend who promised cheaper”. But behind every number from an experienced specialist stands a path.
2009. A smoke-filled internet cafe, because there’s no internet at home. First website for a client — for 900 hryvnias. Deploy via FTP, animation in Macromedia Flash. Those 900 hrn seemed like a small fortune then.
2026. MacBook M3 Max with 48GB RAM. “Colleagues” — Claude Opus and n8n-agents. Systems that withstand load, automate business processes, and save companies thousands of dollars.
Between these two points — 17 years of daily work, thousands of hours of learning, hundreds of projects and mistakes that became lessons.
When a specialist issues an invoice for 5 hours of server setup, the client thinks they’re paying for time. No. They’re paying for the years that allow the specialist to do it in 5 hours instead of putting production down for a week.
For the knowledge of how to configure Nginx so it can handle traffic. How to secure a container. How to make sure backups are actually created and not just “listed” somewhere in plans. This is what distinguishes investment from expense.
Price vs value: why these are different universes
The problem is never about money. The problem is understanding the difference between price and value.
A client who sees only price will always look for something cheaper. Will compare with a freelancer at $5/hour on Upwork. Won’t understand why “just setting up a server” costs what it costs, because “it’s just a few button clicks”.
A client who understands value will ask differently: “What will I get? How reliable is it? How will this affect my business?” And when they hear that instead of eternal subscription at $100/month they get their own infrastructure under full control for a one-time investment — they make the decision in a minute.
Long-term cooperation with the first type of clients is impossible — because for them any specialist remains an expense to minimize. With the second — a partnership is built where both sides understand the value of what’s happening.
“Cheap infrastructure” — that’s an oxymoron. Like a cheap parachute. You can save, but only once.
When a business chooses the cheapest solution for critical systems — that’s not savings. That’s a delayed problem.
A “cheap” server — sooner or later will crash under load. A “free” service — will leak data. A “cheapest” developer — will code it so the next one spends twice as long figuring out what’s happening.
Summary
There are things that look simple. “Just deploy a script”, “just make a website”, “just set up a server”. For a specialist — yes, easy. But this “simplicity” — is the result of years of learning and thousands of hours of practice. For a business — this is what allows it to work, earn, grow. And it has its own value.
“Lexus on gas” — is not about a specific client or a specific developer. It’s about a systemic error in thinking, when a serious business tries to save on what its existence depends on. Because when the engine seizes in the middle of the road — the owner who poured the cheapest oil won’t be blamed. The mechanic who poured it with their own hands will be blamed.
Quality costs what it costs. And a parachute is either reliable or unnecessary.
