THE LONG STORY: in brief.
Since 2001 hosting costs have been reasonable consistantly priced but quality varies GREATLY , at the start its great then they slack off so I have move 4 times in this time to maintain the quality. All our site are now hosted in Australia with an FANTASTIC backup system.
Thus I have never had to raise the hosting cost through smart positioning.
On top of that at the start most website software was purchased as “lifetime usage” , expensive for me to start but paid off as years went on but this changed 2 years ago when ALL software companies decided to dishonour thier lifetime subscriptions and make us pay yearly, I managed to absorb that increase in costs but frankly that will change in the future.
The software absorption