Which configuration to choose ?

Hi everyone !

I recently became a customer of Digital Ocean and can not be any happier,

I already how created a droplet(10$ one) and I have to say I’m very amazed how fast everything works. With the help of very well explained tutorials provided by Digital Ocean I have configured a LEMP server running on Ubuntu 14.04.

I’m planning to use this droplet as a back-end API server for a mobile application which I already have created and will be uploading it soon to Google Play.

The database consists of few tables with total of ~50,000 records in them which will be pulled by the users(thorough PHP script) in chunks (~ 30 rows per request) and JSON response will be generated.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell right now how many these requests will be made per day, but I was wondering, do I really need a 1GB server if total memory usage right now is below 200 MB ? I do realize that the server is not under a high load at the moment but that is why I’m asking here.

I would like hear from people who already host their application’s back-ends/sites, what are the memory usages for you with LEMP configuration ? How many requests do you get and what is the memory usage for your servers under high load ?

There is no problem for me paying extra 5$ right now, but viewing it from a long term perspective it makes me think do I really need to pay extra or can I just stick with 5$ droplet (the one with 512MB) ?

Thank you all in advance !