Whenever I write about AI or automation, my focus is cost-cutting: more output, fewer tokens, lower bills. I follow this in my own work too. Xel Studio and SearchWala both run at zero cost.
Recently I applied the same approach to a family business in the finance space. Its website serves investors and traders. The link is in the first comment if you want to see it.
Here is what changed.
Hosting cost up to ₹8,000 a year, mostly for services nobody used. I moved the site to Netlify. Cost now: zero.
Every small change meant paying a developer again. That dependency is gone.
More automation and workflows are coming to this site. Normally that means expensive business plans. Instead, I split the work across free platforms. Netlify is the face, the frontend. GitHub and GitLab are the brain, running the backend tasks through their free automation runners. Each free plan has its own monthly limit, so I split the work between them, and neither one runs out.
I also rebuilt the frontend. A design like this would cost over ₹15,000 in the market, and I haven't even counted that.
The old plan expires in a few days, and then the domain comes fully under our control. The only bill left is the ₹2,500 domain fee.
Now, be honest. A live business backend running on GitHub and GitLab, platforms most people only use to store code. Smart engineering, or a clever workaround that will break one day?
Website link https://globaltekfinancialservices.netlify.app/
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