🌍 WORLD DEVELOPMENT FUND — NATIONAL OPERATIONS PLATFORM

Hosting & Integration Costs

What it costs to host and run the platform — the infrastructure and the services it plugs into. Hosted on AWS Cape Town (af-south-1) for performance and South African data residency (POPIA).

📦 Capacity: comfortably handles all 1,800 churches

✅ Monthly run-rate (ZAR, ex-VAT). Excludes development. All church & member data lives in one efficient database — 1,800 churches is well within a single well-sized server.

① Hosting — AWS (Cape Town)

The servers and storage that run the whole platform.

Component	Per month
Application + database server — runs CRM, dashboards, onboarding & AI; holds all 1,800 churches' data (16–32GB, scales up as usage grows)	R4,500
Object storage (S3) — documents, proof of milestones, media	R500
CDN — fast delivery of church sites & dashboards nationwide	R500
Backups & data transfer	R600
Hosting subtotal	R6,100 / mo

② API & integrations

The external services the platform connects to.

Service	Cost
AI / LLM (DeepSeek) — the assistant & national command-centre (usage-based; grows with activity)	R2,000 / mo
Domain & SSL — solune.co.za + all church subdomains	R200 / mo
WhatsApp — current linked-device tool now; official Business API added when volume is proven	R0 (for now)
Payments (Yoco) — only when money is collected (R350 / R3,500)	~2.7% per transaction
Integrations subtotal (fixed)	R2,200 / mo

③ One-time — equipment & test devices

Team hardware to build and test the platform and its mobile apps (iOS apps can only be built on a Mac; both phones needed to test on real devices).

Item	Why	Cost
MacBook	Development + required to build & ship iOS apps	R10,000
iPhone — test device	Test the app on real iOS	R6,000
Android phone — test device	Test the app on real Android	R4,000
2× Monitor (split-view)	Code + app/dashboard side-by-side	R5,000
Equipment total		R25,000

Monthly — hosting + integrations

≈ R8,300 / mo

One-time — equipment

R25,000

Runs the full platform for all 1,800 churches. Payments PAYG (2.7%) on collections only.

How it scales: church count (1,800) is handled by one efficient database — it's concurrent usage that drives infrastructure, not the number of churches. As more officers and members are active at once, we add a second server and a managed database (≈ R4,000/mo) — added only when real load calls for it.

Optional, phased per rollout: per-church email mailboxes and VoIP landlines (the flyer offer) are added per church as they go live — billed per church, not upfront.

Indicative · ZAR ex-VAT · AWS af-south-1 (Cape Town) · prepared by Soulune.