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We’ll be ending web hosting for your apps on Glitch

by js4ever on 5/22/25, 5:16 PM with 139 comments

  • by skrebbel on 5/23/25, 4:10 PM

    I just can't get over the fact that this starts with

    > This is a big change, but it’s not an “Our Incredible Journey” post

    and then never, nowhere, at all, makes clear that the post means "We're shutting down Glitch". At least the "incredible journey" posts are clear about that, somehow this here is even worse. It suggests that they're just shutting some small part of it down but actually if I read it right (and the comments here) it actually means they're shutting the whole platform down but might someday want to try and do something else with the name and the userbase.

    I simply don't understand why people write like this. What's the benefit of trying to fool your userbase into thinking that maybe not that much is changing when in fact everything is? Who wins when, the day after they pull the last plug, lots of people email them in panic, because they hadn't realized that "important changes" means "we'll delete everything"?

  • by dustingetz on 5/23/25, 10:42 AM

    $30M Series A by Tiger in 2018, acq by Fastly in 2022 for undisclosed price, shutdown in 2025. Fastly is a CDN and edge network. Glitch was used by Fastly for “internal training” and “internal sales tools” (kinda?), a far cry from “fullstack application platform in the edge”.

    https://blog.glitch.com/post/my-last-day-at-fastly/

    https://www.fastly.com/blog/fastly-announces-acquisition-of-...

  • by Jean-Philipe on 5/23/25, 5:53 AM

    I'm a bit confused...if web hosting shuts down, what stays? Doesn't this mean glitch just shuts down altogether?

  • by dmarcos on 5/22/25, 10:45 PM

    Glitch has been a key piece of the A-Frame community (open source project I maintain) for almost a decade. I'm super thankful to the team! So many people started programming and had first steps in game and 3d graphics development with Glitch.

    It's sad to see it go. I was always somehow worried. They had an awesome and super generous free tier. You don’t even need to create an account! Unfortunately, it looks they couldn't make the numbers work.

  • by troupo on 5/23/25, 7:17 AM

    To people praising this communication: they've given everyone just 6 weeks to move off the platform.

    To quote a response from their forum: https://support.glitch.com/t/discussion-thread-project-hosti...

    --- start quote ---

    I’m not a fan of those overly sweet, corporate-style messages that try to sugarcoat the truth: Glitch was simply too good to last, and you’re losing money...

    That said, my only real complaint is this: if you knew the situation wasn’t financially sustainable, you could have at least announced it a year in advance—not overnight.

    --- end quote ---

  • by weiliddat on 5/22/25, 8:46 PM

    Sad, one of the first of its kind. Created a bunch of one-off tools for friends and colleagues on glitch, but could see why it didn't really take off. For me I switched to other platforms like codesandbox, replit because the editor UX wasn't great for a long time. I get wanting the simplicity angle but having poor hints/autocomplete/etc is a hard sell for writing code.

  • by wilg on 5/23/25, 6:08 AM

    I love the brass of putting "Our Incredible Journey" posts on blast right up top and then writing a post that even less clearly explains if they are shutting down entirely, why they are doing so, or what is going on.

  • by Kiro on 5/23/25, 5:34 AM

    I don't really agree with people saying this is good communication. What will happen with Glitch?

  • by vorador on 5/22/25, 10:25 PM

    Is this the end of fog creek? I remember they had shut down most of their services by the time their rebranded to glitch.

    I wonder if anything is left of the company besides Joel's blog posts.

  • by DannyPage on 5/22/25, 5:56 PM

    I really enjoyed using Glitch as it allowed me to quickly publish and iterate on various experiments or try out new libraries like Datasette or HTMX.

    I am curious what Glitch will look like after July. If they aren’t hosting apps, will they still be hosting code and letting it deploy elsewhere? It says it’s not a full shutdown, but it doesn’t appear to say what will be left to do on Glitch after that date.

  • by philipwhiuk on 5/23/25, 4:05 PM

    So... it totally is an Our Incredible Journey thing.

    They got bought, Fastly doesn't want it, they're killing it.

  • by steivan on 5/22/25, 6:12 PM

    I've been a long-time Glitch user and am now looking for good alternative platforms. My primary use case involves online coding with a Node.js backend using Express and some React apps. If anyone has recommendations, I'd greatly appreciate it.

  • by 627467 on 5/23/25, 4:29 AM

    Unrelated: but the whole glitch labour union that lasted a year before it dissolved itself is the first thing that comes to mind when I read about glitch.

  • by busymom0 on 5/22/25, 5:20 PM

    As someone who had never heard of them, can someone explain what Glitch was used for?

  • by curiouser3 on 5/22/25, 8:33 PM

    glitch.com brings back memories of the pre-slack era Glitch MMO. What an amazing time that was, really beautiful game made by talented people, pivoted the communication side into what we now know as Slack

  • by apitman on 5/23/25, 4:40 PM

    I listened to a great podcast recently with one of the co-creators of Glitch: https://www.localfirst.fm/8

  • by bfdm on 5/22/25, 10:43 PM

    This a real loss. I'll miss Glitch for rapid experimentation with UI and APIs together.

  • by biker142541 on 5/22/25, 9:36 PM

    Just coming to say this is a great example of how communication should be done for such changes. So many companies get this wrong, but this is thoughtful and to the point. Glitch was a springboard for myself as well, so very bittersweet (and I guess I need to migrate really old stuff... but to their point, this is super easy now).

  • by plesiv on 5/24/25, 12:52 PM

    We're building a similar product at https://gitlip.com

    We would love to speak to any Glitch users about their particular use case. Please reach out to natalie [at] gitlip.com

  • by LahanF on 5/23/25, 6:40 PM

    Anyway, all I can say is thank you Anil and team, Glitch helped me learn web dev 7 years ago, and also teach others. It’s just very sad that it’s ending like this, sugarcoating much.

  • by ggorlen on 5/26/25, 2:11 AM

  • by deafpolygon on 5/23/25, 6:56 AM

    Weird.

    Both Mozilla and Glitch are doing something on July 8. Is there something significant about that day?

    "On July 8, 2025 Glitch project hosting and user profiles will be shut down."

    "We’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025."

  • by duck on 5/22/25, 8:38 PM

    Why is Glitch and Pocket both shutting down the same day and announcing today?

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44063662

  • by brulard on 5/23/25, 10:05 AM

    Sad. Do you guys know about a good alternative?

  • by neuroelectron on 5/23/25, 1:23 PM

    It's not realistic to provide a secure hosting infrastructure unless you're AWS-level.

  • by daveguy on 5/22/25, 9:41 PM

    This is excellent communication and respect for their users. Applause for Glitch. Especially allowing users to retrieve resources for a full 6 months after the closure.

    If you appreciate this level of communication and respect, avoid Digital Ocean at all cost. They will fail to send you emails for a few weeks and then delete your resources permanently with no recourse. They are the literal opposite of Glitch. Avoid Digital Ocean.

    I would recommend Glitch remove Digital Ocean from their list of alternatives.