What Size Instance Does a Client Need?
Published September 2, 2026 · Updated September 5, 2026
For most clients, a modest instance is genuinely enough: everyday business software such as file sharing, a helpdesk or a CMS runs comfortably on a mid-sized machine. Size a client by which software they run and how hard they work it, never by their headcount. Start on the small side, and move them up only if it ever feels slow. Getting it wrong is a few clicks to fix, not a migration.
Here’s how to size a client without needing to know what any of the parts do, and without a discovery call about hardware.
The three things a machine size is made of
A size is a virtual machine rather than a physical server: processors, memory and disk allocated to that one client app. Every size is a bundle of those three capacities. In plain words:
- Computing power (processors). How much thinking the machine does at once. More of the client’s people clicking at the same moment needs more of it.
- Memory. The working desk space. Software that juggles a lot at once, such as many people editing together or a big report running, wants a bigger desk.
- Storage. The filing cabinet. The client’s documents, photos, attachments and database all live here. This is the one you can estimate directly from what they have today.
The three sizes bundle these resources in fixed proportions. Prices are list prices; every instance drops 10% once you run 10 clients and 20% at 50.
Compare the three sizes
| Size | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Price per client app |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 1 | 2 GB | 40 GB | $49/mo |
| Medium | 4 | 8 GB | 160 GB | $179/mo |
| Large | 16 | 32 GB | 640 GB | $469/mo |
Worth saying plainly, because a technical reader will do the arithmetic anyway: a bare virtual machine with these numbers on it is cheaper elsewhere, and always will be. What is not on that machine is the patching, the daily backups kept 30 days, the certificate renewals, the monitoring at 2am, the client portal, or a person who answers when a client’s file share stops. Those are an operation rather than a machine, they have to be run to the same standard on every client you take on, and they are what the difference buys.
Two honest rules of thumb:
- The software counts as much as the people. Some tools are simply heavier: a helpdesk indexing every message, or a file share thumbnailing photos, asks more of a server than a booking page will ever ask, at any headcount. Start from what the software does, then adjust for how hard the client works it. Twenty people who open a tool occasionally are a lighter load than five living inside it all day.
- Files push storage; simultaneous work pushes everything else. A photo studio’s file share wants storage early; a busy shared calendar wants computing power and memory before it ever fills a disk.
This is also why sizing each client app separately beats using one size for every client.
If a client only needs storage, don’t move them up a size
Storage is the one capacity that often runs out on its own: the software is perfectly fast, the disk is just filling with files. That does not need a bigger size. Extra storage is an add-on at $10 per 100 GB per month, added to a running instance without touching anything else. Move a client up a size when their software feels slow; add storage when it is merely full.
A few other things sit outside the size price, per instance, and most clients need none of them: global delivery ($50/month per instance, including 50 TB of traffic) for a client whose people or customers span continents, a staging copy ($20/month per instance) when you want somewhere to rehearse a change before doing it in front of them, an IPv4 address ($20/month per instance) when a client’s bank or an older line-of-business system insists on one, compliance retention ($15/month per instance for 90 days of backups, $40 for a full year) for a client whose regulator names a retention period, and a second-region copy ($40/month per instance) for a client whose tender scores disaster recovery. Ordinary support from a real person, a client portal for that client, and 1 TB of traffic a month are included at every size. They are all listed on the pricing page, and response times you can write into your own client SLAs come from the partner program rather than from a per-instance add-on.
Start small, because moving up is a few clicks
Sizing is low-stakes here because you can change a client’s size later. On Kosnomos, moving a client up is a few clicks in your partner portal rather than a migration project, so the sensible strategy is to start small and let real use tell you. The sign is unmistakable: pages feel slow at their busy times of day. Move them up one size and it goes away. (A filling disk is the other story: add storage, as above.)
If you are genuinely torn between two sizes for a client, take the smaller one. The margin you keep while finding out is real; the cost of being wrong is minutes and a conversation you were going to have anyway.
Still unsure?
Tell us which software the client wants and how their team would use it, and a real person will answer with a straight recommendation. Or pick a size and change it later if the app needs more resources.