by jalada on 10/19/15, 7:45 PM with 111 comments
by PascalW on 10/19/15, 9:06 PM
That said; for hobby stuff I've switched to a cheap VPS plus Dokku [0] and haven't looked back. Works with Heroku buildpacks and even runs custom Dockerfiles if you need anything fancy. Hardly requires any maintenance.
There's a couple of alternatives like Deis [1] and Flynn [2] that offer more advanced features, but they're much more complex and way overkill for my pet projects.
[0] http://progrium.viewdocs.io/dokku/ [1] http://deis.io/ [2] https://flynn.io/
by brandur on 10/19/15, 9:03 PM
https://brandur.org/fragments/cloudflare-ssl
You can stay on the free tier of Cloudflare and the hobby tier of Heroku and get full encryption on your custom domain (and without worrying about getting certs issued). This is how I run my more important hobby apps.
And regarding the lack of novelty of `git push heroku master` — I'd argue that it's still surprisingly valuable even in modern times. Sure you can do it yourself using a dozen different techniques these days, but as a hobbyist I want to be building apps and not maintaining personal infrastructure.
(Disclaimer: I used to work at Heroku.)
by savant on 10/19/15, 9:06 PM
I get that people are frustrated with heroku's pricing, but at the end of the day I think that if your side project isn't worth the money you spend on it's hosting, maybe you should look into other side projects? If it's truly not a money-making project, not needing to scale it or have it up 24/7 seems like a reasonable trade-off to not paying for it's hosting.
The number of tools and resources Heroku provides is quite significant, and developing/deploying/maintaining similar solutions is certainly not cheap or easy. Especially at scale.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the Dokku maintainers.
- [1] http://progrium.viewdocs.io/dokku/
- [2] http://convox.com/by glogla on 10/19/15, 9:17 PM
There's one cool alternative I found: Hetzner Online[1] leases dedicated hardware that their other customers stopped using or ordered but didn't use, etc. It is in form of reverse auction - unused hardware gets cheaper until someone rents it.
You can get i7-3770 server with 2x3 TB disks and 16 GB RAM for 32 EUR per month. That's not much more money than linode, but it is much beefier and just your (but no SSD). If you pay more you can get something like i7-3770 with 32 GB RAM, 2x3 TB disks and 2x240 GB SSD for 65 EUR a month.
The servers are in Germany, which might be interesting for Europeans who are wary of US cloud companies.
I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just find their offer cool.
by shostack on 10/19/15, 8:38 PM
However to the comment about "git push heroku master," someone that is an "early" programmer like myself finds that level of simplification helpful when I'm focusing on things like learning all the other things that could go wrong with my Rails Tutorial app.
That said, as I now am at the point of starting to work on projects that I hope to one day be public facing, I'm wondering if there are any recommendations for "Heroku-like" providers with a free tier that stays up 24/7 for super simple Rails and Sinatra apps, perhaps with a DB.
by holografix on 10/19/15, 10:00 PM
$7 dollars a month to run a little app? That's less than I spend on coffee each day and I'm glad that money is going towards differentiated and valuable service.
I have a couple of toy apps, a personal blog and a "not such a toy" app on Heroku and I have used their services for free for AGES - more than fair enough that they make some money.
by lolsal on 10/19/15, 9:08 PM
The benefit to me of using something like Heroku is not because I get more CPU/RAM than an equivalently priced Linode instance - the value is in not having to manage a Linode instance at all.
I'd also argue that git-pushing to Heroku is still a lot less friction than dealing with docker images or chef/puppet scripts.
by ufmace on 10/19/15, 9:34 PM
I'm wondering how AWS compares, though - running a dedicated, manually managed EC2 instance or ElasticBeanstalk. Seems like you could get your own server, and still have little barrier to scaling as high as anybody could ever need at the touch of a button. Anybody have much insight on that?
by rubyn00bie on 10/19/15, 9:20 PM
They're finally too expensive for you, or you outgrew them? They aren't cheap, and never have been, especially for hobbyists.
If you have a hobby, you most likely have more time than money to complete your hobby, so why, why use something like Heroku? The very nature of your activity is to spend your time, not your money, Heroku is only giving you the feeling of savings until you outgrow their nearly worthless free offering. Now you have to spend your time, moving, configuring, and learning an "entirely new" system. Had you done this the first time, you'd have saved money/time.
Yeah... "git push" to deploy is easy[1]-- and if you're new to application development it can be nice, but! It also means you have no idea how to configure or run your app (i.e. deploy). It means you're more vulnerable to your vendors quarterly earnings needs (price hikes), it means you're more vulnerable to vendor technology changes (lock-in), it also means if it ever hits the fan-- you're gonna have oodles of downtime while you learn how to do it "right" the first (nth) time.
FWIW, it's actually really easy to run a VPS that's stable once you learn how to do it properly. Don't fear it, mate. I've always found it nice since none of my projects ever get substantial traffic, I can usually run some auxiliary service I need (like Gitlab) on it too. A two for one, eh?
... One last thing, if you're running a business Heroku might be the right choice (it's up to you to evaluate the risk/reward).
[1] I personally think deploying with Capistrano is a cinch (cap deploy) but it'll take you a lil' bit of effort to set up the first time.
by Harkins on 10/20/15, 4:28 PM
Then the bill came, and they'd added a $50/mo db to my $9/db. Support was shocked, shocked that their tool had told me to install the db. They admitted the $9 plan sufficed for me, didn't fix or refund the unwanted extra plan, and to top it off database backups are still broken.
I'd just like to have a screenshot of the misleading sales process they pulled. If anyone sees this, please drop me a line. Meanwhile, I'm checking out Dokku and other alternatives for hosting on VPSs - aside from my little hobby project, I have tens of thousands of dollars of consulting client hosting to start migrating away.
by toomuchtodo on 10/19/15, 8:15 PM
by joeevans1000 on 10/20/15, 10:35 PM
by TheMagicHorsey on 10/19/15, 8:44 PM
by oso2k on 10/19/15, 11:16 PM
by mesozoic on 10/19/15, 9:09 PM
by smt88 on 10/19/15, 9:06 PM
by Beltiras on 10/19/15, 11:04 PM
by nacho2sweet on 10/19/15, 10:54 PM
They are a business. They don't owe anyone shit, it is nice they give anything.