The web hosting costs basically nothing. Most of the cost comes from the database.
Modern computers are mind-bogglingly powerful. An old laptop off eBay can probably handle the load for business needs for all but the very largest corporations.
As someone who is literally using old laptops to host things from my basement on my consumer line (personal, non-commercial) and a business line (commercial)...
I can host this for under 50 bucks a year, including the domain and power costs, and accounting for offsite backup of the data.
I wish people understood just how much the "cloud" is making in pure profit. If you're already a software dev... you can absolutely manage the complexity of hosting things yourself for FAR cheaper. You won't get five 9s of reliability (not that you're getting that from any major cloud vendor anyways without paying through the nose and a real SLA) but a small UPS will easily get you to 99% uptime - which is absolutely fine for something like this.
It seems like computers are getting more capable, but developers are becoming less capable at roughly the same pace.
And that makes perfect sense. Why should humans inconvenience themselves to please the machine? If anyone’s at fault, it’s the database for not being smart enough to optimize the query on its own.
It’s a systemic problem. You’re going to loose the battle against human nature: Ever noticed how, after moving from a college dorm into a house, people suddenly manage to fill all the space with things? It’s not like the dorm was enough to fit everything they ever needed, but they had to accommodate themselves to it. This constraint is artificial, exhausting to keep up, and, if gone, will no longer be adhered to.
If a computer suddenly becomes more powerful, developers aren’t going to keep up their good habits performance optimisation, because they had those only out of necessity in the first place.
I agree with this statement for normal people. Not for software developers. You're just begging for stagnation. Your job is literally dealing with computers and making them do neat stuff. When you refuse to do that because "computers should be making my life easier" you should really find another line of employment where you're a consumer of software, not a producer.