Cutting Monitoring Costs with Open Source
Context
Section titled “Context”We previously relied on a patchwork of commercial monitoring tiers. As usage grew, so did monthly costs — SaaS invoices were trending toward $400–$600 per month for features we could host ourselves.
Decision
Section titled “Decision”- Identify open-source equivalents (Sentry, Prometheus, Grafana, Tempo).
- Estimate hosting + maintenance cost on Hetzner.
- Evaluate migration risk vs. savings.
Migration
Section titled “Migration”- Deployed stack to a single hardened Hetzner server.
- Migrated apps to send metrics/logs/errors to new endpoints.
- Parallel run validated parity before retiring paid services.
Financial Outcome
Section titled “Financial Outcome”- Hosting cost: ~€40/month Hetzner server.
- Savings: net $300–$500/month.
- ROI: less than one month.
Strategic Benefits
Section titled “Strategic Benefits”- No vendor lock-in — We own our monitoring data.
- Budget freed — Can reinvest into developer tooling and security audits.
- Skill growth — Internal team now familiar with operating observability stack.