I run sarmalinux.com plus four to six client projects at any given time, solo. Here is what runs the show in 2026.
The full stack
| Spec | Tool | Cost | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontend / hosting | Vercel | £35-90/mo | Time saved > cost |
| Database | Supabase | £25/mo | Postgres + auth + realtime + storage |
| Object storage | Cloudflare R2 | ~£3/mo | Zero egress |
| Email transactional | Resend | £0-15/mo | Best DX, free tier generous |
| Email marketing | Buttondown | £8/mo | Lightweight, good design |
| Payments | Stripe | 1.5% + 20p | Default |
| Domains | IONOS | ~£12/yr each | Email forwarding included |
| Editor | VS Code + Cursor | £16/mo Cursor Pro | AI-first daily flow |
| Terminal AI | Claude Code CLI | £16/mo | Surgical edits |
| CI | GitHub Actions | £0 | 2k min free is plenty |
| Monitoring | Better Stack + Vercel logs | £24/mo | Uptime + log retention |
| Analytics | Plausible self-hosted | £0 (on Hetzner) | GDPR-friendly |
| Booking | Cal.com self-hosted | £0 | Full control |
| AI primary | Groq + Vertex Gemini Flash | £20-40/mo | Cheap, fast |
| AI fallback | OpenRouter | £0-30/mo | Multi-model failover |
Total recurring cost: roughly £160-280/month depending on traffic and usage[1][2]. Not nothing, but every line item earns its place.
Selection criteria
I pick a tool if it meets three tests:
- Time-saving > cost. I value an hour of my time at £40 minimum, more for client work. A £25/month tool that saves me 1 hour/month pays for itself.
- Operational simplicity. A tool I do not need to think about. I am the operations team; if a tool wants 10 hours of upkeep a month, it is out.
- Reasonable lock-in. Vercel I can leave for AWS in a week. Supabase I can leave for Postgres-anywhere in two days. Avoid tools that are commercially impossible to leave.
Why I do not have
- A separate logging stack. Vercel logs + Better Stack covers it.
- A separate APM. Vercel insights is enough for a solo.
- A team chat. Apple Messages with myself is the team chat.
- A project management tool. Linear for client work, plain markdown for my own.
- A separate auth provider. Supabase Auth.
The unsung heroes
Resend is the email tool. Free tier is generous and the DX is the best in the category.
Better Stack for uptime. £24 covers me; the free tier is fine until you have a few production endpoints.
Plausible self-hosted for analytics. £0 since it runs on a £6/month Hetzner box I already have.
What I would change at scale
If I were running this with a team of three:
- Add Sentry instead of relying on Vercel logs (£26/mo)
- Add Linear instead of markdown (£10/mo per seat)
- Add a secrets manager (1Password or Doppler)
For solo, the simplicity wins.
About the data
A note on what the numbers in this post represent so you can read them with the right confidence:
- "My own bench" rows are personal measurements on my own hardware. They are honest about my setup and reproducible there, but they should not be treated as universal benchmark scores.
- Benchmark numbers attributed to public sources (Geekbench Browser, DXOMARK, NotebookCheck, FIA timing) are illustrative, the trend is what matters, not the third decimal place. Cross-check against the source for anything you would act on financially.
- Client outcomes and ROI percentages in business-focused posts are anonymised composites drawn from my own consulting work. Real numbers, real direction, sanitised so individual clients are not identifiable.
- Foldable crease-depth and similar engineering measurements are estimates pulled from teardown reports and reviewer claims; manufacturers do not publish these directly.
- Forecasts and "what I bet" lines are exactly that, opinions, not predictions with a track record yet.
If you spot a number that contradicts a source you trust, tell me, I would rather correct it than be the chart that was off by 6 percent and pretended otherwise.