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Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

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Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#81
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tech startup was just a processing server for Stripe payments, of which the static website had a single thing to buy. If its not clear all the money was made from people buying the product itself. Heroku worked perfect for that. The $7/mo was fine. Only reason I write this is because I wish there was a book of tech architecture case studies. What problem or business venture they were trying, what architecture they…

What kind of DB did you have? As I recall, the 7$ offer only supported 10000 rows of PostgreSQL?

Stripe was the DB

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#82
post #27
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're considering Linode, you should read up on their history of security incidents and make sure it's a risk you're willing to take.

I've been with Linode for over six years and the only security incident I've have was my own fault. Follow the guides for securing new VPSs - I recommend that SSH be configured to disallow root logins and only allow certificates for authentication. There are many great guides available.

I think people are disagreeing with you because the parent comment is referring to Linode platform security and not the security of the individual VPSes -- which is a valid point. The security of your individual VPS depends, to a certain degree, on the Linode platform's security.

But I find it disheartening that multiple people chose to just downvote you, and nobody bothered to write a response.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#83
why can't you use just aws micro free t1? they give you a micro machine for 1 year free. what loads do you anticipate, what hw requirements do you need for your machine? i think hosting a simple website with sqlite database works great on an aws micro, if you need something more glorified like postgresql or mysql and multi-tier, then perhaps you should go for something like digital ocean or paid aws, this all depends on your requirements which you haven't specified.

currently i'm hosting a golang web + restful api + websocket server + sqlite3 db + redis + nginx all on a single micro AWS server, but my marketing hasn't really started yet, we're talking about <100 hits thus far per day.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#84
post #54

Don't trust anybody who doesn't start with "it depends". For nothing in this world there is one perfect answer. Context means a lot. What have you coded? Why do you think you are done if it is not running anywhere (I would say you are 20% done if it runs on your laptop)? How many people need to use it to be viable (e.g. a diary service needs only one user who writes texts for himself, a shop needs at least make its h…

"skill"? That's bullshit, you can't tell anything about skill from a person's poorly phrased question. Especially since that person's primary language might not be English.

In fact you can tell a lot about what questions people ask. The more specific and detailed a question is, the better the person knows the topic. A skilled language learner would never ask "What is the best way to learn English?" because he knows already that there is no best way, in fact there is no single way. He knows that he needs to combine different methods and which are the common methods and how well they work for him.

By recognizing a misconception that people have at a certain skill level you can guess their skill level quite acurately. Beginners usually want to solve the biggest of problems, and be done after the next weekend. Mid-levelers usually have specific questions about a method that must be the one true best solution in their eyes, but somehow they struggle with topic X. High skilled people usually ask questions that can't be googled, and even other experts need to look into the problem more deeply to figure it out together.

It's also hard to fake, since you need have some experience in the area to recognize how your current believe is limited. You cannot ask a ungoogleble question if you don't know already most of what can be googled about that topic.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#85
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of DB did you have? As I recall, the 7$ offer only supported 10000 rows of PostgreSQL?

Stripe was the DB

I see, and if you were to use your own DB to keep track of users, transactions and sold items. Would you still recommend that same solution?

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#86

No one has mentioned Heroku yet. Starting at $7 they are a bit more expensive than DigitalOcean, but with that extra $2 you'll get their platform, their tooling for deploying the app, their database backups. Adding other services later on is also easy with their addons. By choosing Heroku you can save hundreds or thousands of dollars in ops costs over a course of a few months. The hosting cost may go up quickly, but…

My tech startup was just a processing server for Stripe payments, of which the static website had a single thing to buy. If its not clear all the money was made from people buying the product itself. Heroku worked perfect for that. The $7/mo was fine. Only reason I write this is because I wish there was a book of tech architecture case studies. What problem or business venture they were trying, what architecture they…

I would immediately buy that book.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#87
post #40

Reading a lot of these comments make me think that everyone on HN is a cynic of the Oscar Wilde/Lady Windermere variety: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" [1]. IMHO you should go with Heroku and ignore anyone who's suggesting dedicated servers, VPSes, AWS, Docker or containers. Every moment you spend maintaining a server or doing devops is wasted because it's time not spent building o…

Managing and maintaining systems takes precious time. When things break it takes even more time. I strongly agree using Heroku here as well.

However, you can still leverage the AWS managed services selectively so the two of them work together. EG: - AWS S3, AWS SQS

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#88
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe was the DB

I see, and if you were to use your own DB to keep track of users, transactions and sold items. Would you still recommend that same solution?

Unlikely, but Stripe has those features in its Customer object. If you want to make some sort of pre-cognitive recommendations engine, then do what you need to do that. These are premature optimizations I would never need.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#89
post #8
post #3

If "$10 / month" counts as cheap in your book, check out a Linode VPS. I've been using them for a couple years now, and I have been extremely satisfied (although I've upgraded to a beefier VPS as my project has grown in popularity). Another good VPS option is DigitalOcean, which offers a smaller (and cheaper) plan for $5 / month. There are also a lot of shared hosting providers out there that will sell you cheaper sp…

If you're considering Linode, you should read up on their history of security incidents and make sure it's a risk you're willing to take.

Is there a VPS provider that _hasn't_ had security issues? Linode has had a few pretty bad ones but they've also been around for a long time and always seem to be improving their systems and processes (lately communication with customers following an incident has improved a lot, and with the DDoS issues they had the improvements they're making to their network are pretty solid). For the price/performance ratio though there's no comparison.

If you can afford it, AWS is possibly a more secure choice with a whole ecosystem of associated products, but at face value if you just need a few VPSes you'll pay a lot more for the same performance than you do with Linode.

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