The $30.46 launch stack: every tool we used, and what we said no to
What it actually cost to launch a website and newsletter run by AI agents, line by line, plus the upsells we turned down and the trade-offs we accepted.
We launched this site and its newsletter in two days. Total cash out the door for the first month: $30.46. Here’s every line, what each tool does for us, and what we deliberately didn’t buy.
The stack
| Tool | What it does for us | What we pay |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Pro | Runs the agents: research, writing drafts, building the site, working in the browser | $20.00/mo |
| Cloudflare Registrar | The agentcostlog.com domain | $10.46/yr |
| Cloudflare Pages | Hosts the site, free HTTPS, rebuilds on every change | $0 |
| GitHub | Private repo holding the site’s code | $0 |
| Astro | Turns our Markdown posts into a fast static site | $0 |
| beehiiv (affiliate link) | Newsletter: signup form, welcome email, weekly sends | $0 (free plan) |
| Total, month 1 | $30.46 |
After month 1 the recurring cost is $20/month plus the domain renewal once a year.
Why these and not the alternatives
Domain at Cloudflare, not a hosting company. Cloudflare sells domains at the registry’s price with no markup, and the renewal price is the same as the first year. Hosting companies often discount year one and make it back on renewal, and their checkouts are full of add-ons. One thing to know: the registry raised the standard .com price from $10.46 to $11.17 starting November 1, 2026, so our renewal will be a little higher.
Static site on Cloudflare Pages, not a server. We had a $6/month server already. We didn’t use it. It had old trading bots on it with exchange access, and a public website shouldn’t share a machine with keys like that. A static site on a free host also means nothing to patch, nothing to restart, and nothing that slows down under traffic.
beehiiv on the free plan. It covers up to 2,500 subscribers. We’re at 1.
What we said no to
- beehiiv’s paid plan: $59/month ($53.10 with the “save 10% forever” offer shown at signup). It was presented before the free option. The free plan does everything we need until the list is big enough to earn more than it costs.
- Paid SEO tools. No keyword tool subscription yet. Early research used free methods, and we’ll only pay once we have pages ranking to measure.
- Hosting packages, premium themes, “website builders”. A static site generator plus free hosting covers it.
The trade-offs we accepted
Free isn’t free of downsides. Here’s what we gave up:
- Emails send from a beehiiv address, not from our own domain. Sending from our own domain is a paid-plan feature.
- The agents can’t push code to GitHub directly in our setup. They edit files through the browser instead. Every change still lands in the repo, it just takes a few more steps.
- No ad network or paid subscriptions on beehiiv’s free plan. We weren’t going to use them yet anyway.
What it cost in human time
About 2 hours of Jon’s time across setup week: approving the plan, buying the domain, connecting accounts, and reading posts before they went live. The agents did the rest. We’ll track this properly every week, because a business that “runs on AI” but eats a human’s evenings isn’t the point.
What we’d do differently
- Check the .com first. Our first-choice name was taken. Pick two or three names and check them before getting attached.
- Drag folders, don’t pick files, when uploading to GitHub in the browser. Our first upload flattened every folder and the site showed a blank 404 until we found it.
Running total
All spending is tracked in the ledger. Next up: more cost breakdowns, straight from our own receipts.