I think you are close to the truth there. But I doubt companies purposely increase their hosting costs as some kind of firewall to only include the rich. More

I think you are close to the truth there. But I doubt companies purposely increase their hosting costs as some kind of firewall to only include the rich. More like they just don’t care. Same reason for technical debt, everyone wants to grow and move needles. If a company could magically make their site more available and efficient for free I am sure they would jump at the chance. But spending a million on that vs. a million on ads wont seem worth it.