Open-source models sounds like it would be cheapest, maybe running it on a VPS or something
Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
61–70 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#62Cloudflare is a nice option if you can adapt your system to run there [1]. You could also run just the frontend on CF and host any APIs elsewhere. Or check these sites [2] [3] with some good reviews and comparisons of hosting providers. Regarding spaced repetition, RemNote 1.17 an 1.18 has a bunch of AI features for summarizing PDFs and YouTube transcripts and turning that into Q&A for spaced repetition, and they als…
I am against adapting my application to fit a particular proprietary platform. My platform should support me, not the other way around.
I understand this position very well! Sometimes there’s room for trade offs, you lose some flexibility but gain something in return.
Also replacing some of CF primitives with something else later can be viable, specially if you plan for it.
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#63Few things beats a cheap, powerful Hetzner server, IMO. I host a LOT of stuff on my single €40/month box. 20 core, 64 gb ram, 1 TB ssd, unmetered network. They have GPU-backed servers too, obviously theyre more expensive, and not ideal for your usecase maybe. Modal is a good serverless alternative if you want to scale to zero and be able to handle spiky loads.
Crazy to me that folks still recommend Hetnzer considering how easily they will shut off your services with zero recourse. They include vague things in their T&C like "2.7. Furthermore, we reserve the right to terminate the contractual relationship without notice for good cause."
There have been plenty of stories just on HN about this. Not a place I'd choose to host anything important.
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#64I also planning to move workloads from public clouds - it is expensive and too complicated. I created a service to easily deploy modern apps to VPS. Like Vercel but separating control plane and servers. Supporting both CPU and GPU servers. Similar to Coolify but much easier and cheaper to use.
Hey, I am also interested in switching to some inexpensive servers to run my web apps, but configuring and deploying it can be quite a chore. What is the platform name? I heard about coolify, but it is so difficult to set it up on my own server...
Exactly, we want to make it as easy as possible and also enable portability so you can switch to a bigger server or other provider.
The platform is called DollarDeploy and we will be launching soon on HN!
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#65Without any information on your stack it’s very hard for anyone to give advice.
One thing that might be worth looking at is moving your backend into a lamda. There are various shims that make this very easy for node based backends.
For low traffic websites (even for quite high traffic sites) this can be almost free.
Your main costs will then be whatever database you are using.
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#66OP here with additional details requested by several of the commenters. Thanks so much to everyone for your responses on this thread, as well as those who reached out via email with suggestions and opportunities for collaboration.
Description of the stack:
- The frontend is a TypeScript Next.js app, with Prisma and RDS Postgres for persistence, and S3 for storing files uploaded by users.
- On the backend I have a BullMQ worker for handling asynchronous tasks such as audio/video transcription, backed by Redis.
- A Telegram bot that allows quickly adding resources from a phone and for having practice conversations with AI.
- Everything is deployed via a Github Actions pipeline, with images hosted on ECR and other AWS resources deployed using Terraform.
Preferably the solution would allow me to reuse at least parts of the existing CI/CD pipeline and Terraform for managing resources. Some of the suggestions by commenters such as running this on a machine in my home, while may be optimal from a cost minimization perspective, compromise a bit too much on quality-of-life for me—not simply from a developer perspective, but I also live somewhat of a nomadic lifestyle and prefer to have few physical possessions.
I already tried applying for AWS Activate but was rejected due to not meeting their criteria. I do not have a company or non-profit entity formally set up for this project. It initially started as a research project purely for personal interest, to explore how LLMs can be used for memory augmentation (in general, not just for language learning). I’ve been a user of conventional SRS tools such as Anki for many years, and have been frustrated by certain UX limitations that hindered consistent long-term use. Initially, I built it as a tool for myself, with me as the sole target audience. Onboarding foreign monks in Thailand was a fortuitous occurrence that I had not initially anticipated.
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#67Cloudflare is a nice option if you can adapt your system to run there [1]. You could also run just the frontend on CF and host any APIs elsewhere. Or check these sites [2] [3] with some good reviews and comparisons of hosting providers. Regarding spaced repetition, RemNote 1.17 an 1.18 has a bunch of AI features for summarizing PDFs and YouTube transcripts and turning that into Q&A for spaced repetition, and they als…
RemNote looks really cool, and it seems like they are exploring similar problems to the one's I'm trying to solve. It will definitely be a valuable source of inspiration. Thanks for putting this on my radar!
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#68Have you tried applying to AWS Activate? I'm not sure whether they support non-profits, but if you can swing it, they'll subsidise your compute and some model costs. In terms of a budget friendly alternatives, definitely look into fly.io. We have a AWS setup, but run some compute for ephemeral use cases in fly.io. > Also, if anyone has experience with applying spaced repetition or other memorization techniques to cha…
I'm currently building a hybrid experience where users can have long conversations for things like conversation practice, while the bot also having the ability to present Anki-style flashcards. I'm also exploring other modalities for "cards" such as questions that would allow the user to respond to the bot's question with a voice message, and having the system analyze the recording for pronunciation/tone issues. Weaving these multiple modalities into a seamless experience is something that I'm still working on.
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Put everything behind a reverse proxy, then set up automated blue/green deployments. It's extremely trivial for OP's scale of application.
Hn moment. Blue green with zero downtime on a VPS is not extremely trivial. Simple for some, at best.
Actually, a while back I recorded myself setting this up from scratch (to make a timelapse). I used Nginx reverse proxy, had my apps in Docker containers across my VPSs, the only other tooling I used was Woodpecker CI for the SCM integration and Ansible for my deployment playbooks.
I looked at the raw footage, it was about 45 hours total. So roughly a working week. You can certainly do it faster, I was not rushing and included unnecessary features. There was also plenty of non-CI/CD stuff in that recording.
So yes, I consider this to be trivial. There is so much open source software to lean on these days that does practically everything for you. There are even ready-made k8s distributions (k3s) that will do more in an arguably more standardized way.
People are afraid of it because platforms like AWS/Vercel/etc have coddled them and made them think this stuff is magic. It's just systems, you can do it.
Re: Ask HN: Moving a not-for-profit web app off AWS
#70If it's a simple app, consider NearlyFreeSpeech https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/hosting Easy, straight-forward no-frills hosting. Could you share the app if/when it's available somewhere? I have a Buddhist monk friend moving to Thailand later this year who would be quite interested in something such as what you described.
Sent you an email.