Your server bill has gone up. Should you move, shrink or just pay?

If your hosting company has just put your price up, don't move yet. The server you already have may now be the cheapest deal you'll get, and changing it could cost you more than the rise.

That sounds backwards, so here's why.

What's going on

Servers are full of memory and fast storage, and AI data centres are buying as much of both as they can get. OVHcloud says DDR5 memory now costs six times what it did a year ago, and hosting companies are passing that on.

A few examples, all before VAT:

• Hetzner. Its June change took the small CX23 cloud server in Germany from €3.99 to €5.49 a month, and the CPX22 from €7.99 to €19.49.
• OVHcloud. Its entry VPS-1 went from €4.49 to €6.49 in the spring. From 1 October, dedicated servers already running pick up new rates at renewal: 20% or 40% more on added memory, depending on the server's generation.
• Leaseweb. It raised VPS prices on new contracts from 1 August, by an average of 24% in the UK.

Don't wait for it to pass, either. TrendForce expects memory contract prices to rise another 10 to 15% this quarter, though more slowly than before. In March OVHcloud was forecasting a "gradual return to normal in 2029".

Why your old server might be the bargain

Here's the catch. Not every rise reaches existing customers (Hetzner's April one did), but many of the latest apply only to new orders. If that's you, the price you're on may be protected for as long as you leave things alone.

Hetzner says existing contracts keep their terms after its June change, but the new prices apply if you resize a server. Its price page also warns that some changes to older servers "may trigger a switch to the current pricing". Leaseweb says its rise "does not affect existing ongoing contracts", which carry on at their current price until you cancel or change them.

So an innocent upgrade can be the expensive bit. Add some memory, or build a replacement server, and you could land on today's price list. Look at the new price before you click.

Read the invoice first

Not every rise looks like one. On 1 October OVHcloud split local storage and public IP addresses out of the price of its Generation 3 cloud servers. The hourly server price stayed the same, but OVHcloud puts the rise at between 1.4% and 21.9%, with the small servers feeling it most.

So put this month's invoice and last month's side by side. Then find out whether you're paying for backups, IP addresses, snapshots or old disks you've forgotten about.

Do the sums on moving

Moving looks like the obvious answer, but the work is the real cost.

Say another provider would save you £5 a month. That's £60 a year. A move means building the new server, copying everything over, testing it, changing DNS, and fixing whatever turns out to depend on the old IP address. If you paid someone for half a day at my rate of £350, you'd need nearly six years to get that back.

The other provider has the same memory problem, too. Moving makes sense when the saving is big, or when you've got another reason to go, such as UK hosting or better support.

Is your server the right size?

A server bought with room to grow may never have needed the room. Three commands will give you a first look:

free -h
df -h
uptime

free -h shows memory (read the "available" column), df -h shows how full the disks are, and uptime shows load, which you can compare with the processor count from nproc.

That's one moment in time, so check your provider's graphs over a month as well. For scale, this website and its visitor stats run on one small virtual server, and Umami and its database use about 470MB of memory between them.

If there's a lot to spare, price up a smaller plan at today's rates before you change anything. With the protected old prices, smaller isn't always cheaper.

What to do this week

1. Compare the last two invoices, line by line.
2. Ask your provider whether your price is protected, and what would end that.
3. Look at a month of graphs.
4. If you're happy with the server, ask about paying up front. OVHcloud, for one, says you can lock in current rates by prepaying for a set period. Check the terms first.

For plenty of people, the right answer will be to tidy up the extras and pay the rise. It's dull, but a few pounds a month is cheaper than a weekend of moving servers.

If you can no longer tell what's what on your bill, that's what my hosting cost review is for. I show you where the money goes and what you can cut. It's free if the savings I find add up to less than the fee over a year.