How I Save $1,463 per Month Using Claude Code as My Server Admin

I started on Heroku because pushing code and getting a URL was effortless.

Platform fees rose over time—basic dynos, a Postgres add-on, and workers added up to hundreds per year.

Managing servers previously meant writing Ansible playbooks and debugging iptables rules.

I used Claude Code to describe tasks in plain English; it SSHs in and runs commands to set up Dokku on a Hetzner server.

Dokku is a lightweight Docker-based PaaS compatible with Heroku buildpacks, so existing apps run without changes and you pay for hardware instead of platform pricing.