Real-world examples. Names and identifying details are kept confidential at customers' request.
A four-person team in Germany built a document management SaaS for SMEs. They used Amazon S3 (eu-central-1) to store customer-uploaded PDFs and exports. Their monthly AWS bill had three line items that kept growing: storage (~180 GB), outbound traffic (~600 GB/month as the user base grew), and per-request charges. By month eight of operation, storage costs alone had risen to over €60/month — a significant share of their infrastructure budget for a pre-revenue product.
The team explored S3 Intelligent-Tiering and lifecycle policies to move older objects to Glacier. This helped with storage cost slightly but did nothing for their egress bill, which was the dominant cost driver.
HexCore's control panel has a built-in S3 migration tool that copies data directly from an existing S3-compatible bucket — just enter the source endpoint, access key, and bucket name. The team used it to pull all 180 GB from AWS without writing any scripts. For those who prefer the CLI, rclone copy works just as well:
rclone copy aws-s3:documents hexcore-s3:documents \ --s3-provider AWS \ --transfers 32 \ --checkers 16
The application code was unchanged: they updated one environment variable (the S3 endpoint URL) and rotated the access keys.
The monthly storage bill dropped from €65 to €8. Egress cost dropped to zero — their 600 GB/month of outbound traffic was covered by the included allowance on the S3 Basic plan. Total saving: €57/month, or €684/year.
Stack used: Node.js app on a Linux VPS · HexCore S3 (50 GB plan) · rclone for sync
A Dutch freelance developer maintains 12 small-to-medium client websites and web apps: mostly WordPress installs, a couple of Laravel APIs, and one Next.js project. Previously he ran each project on a separate shared hosting account across two providers — paying around €6–8/month per project, totalling over €90/month.
He consolidated everything onto a single HexCore Linux VPS (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, SSD). Each client project runs in its own Docker Compose stack. Traefik handles SSL termination and routing by domain name. Automated weekly database snapshots go to HexCore S3 via a cron job.
# Traefik label example in docker-compose.yml labels: - "traefik.http.routers.client-a.rule=Host(`client-a.com`)" - "traefik.http.routers.client-a.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
Monthly infrastructure cost went from €90+ to €12 (VPS) + €0.90 (S3 backups) = ~€13 total. Deploy time for a new client environment dropped from "set up shared hosting, configure FTP, upload files" to running docker compose up -d. He now uses the saved budget for a dedicated monitoring tool.
Stack used: Ubuntu 22.04 · Docker + Traefik · WordPress, Laravel, Next.js · HexCore S3 for backups · Cronjob → rclone → S3
A Polish fintech startup was using a US-based cloud provider for both compute and document storage. Their enterprise clients — mostly mid-size companies in Germany and Austria — began asking pointed questions about where customer transaction data was being stored and processed. One client mentioned an upcoming data protection authority (DPA) audit. Under GDPR Article 46, transfers to third countries require appropriate safeguards, and the startup's legal counsel determined the existing SCCs were insufficient for the sensitivity of the data.
A cloud provider that: (a) is an EU legal entity, (b) has servers physically located in the EEA, (c) can provide a Data Processing Agreement under EU law, and (d) doesn't route data through US parent companies. Equally important: the migration had to happen in under two weeks before their next enterprise renewal.
HexCore is incorporated in Slovakia (EU member state) and operates data centers in Tallinn and Amsterdam. The team migrated their PostgreSQL database to a Linux VPS in Tallinn and moved document storage to HexCore S3 (also Tallinn region). The DPA was signed before any data transfer took place.
Migration steps that worked well:
pg_dump | ssh | pg_restore for a hot copy of the database with minimal downtime windowThe migration was completed in 6 days. The DPA audit found no compliance issues with data storage or processing location. Two enterprise clients specifically mentioned the EU-only infrastructure as a factor in their renewal decision. Infrastructure cost stayed roughly the same — HexCore's pricing was comparable to the US provider for equivalent specs.
Stack used: Ubuntu 22.04 (8 vCPU / 16 GB RAM VPS) · PostgreSQL 15 · HexCore S3 for document storage · DPA signed under Slovak / EU law