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How I Built a Side Project

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Re: How I Built a Side Project

#31

Post by wuliwong »

overcast wrote: post #20
mcone wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, but Heroku has a much lower barrier of entry for people who are just starting out. You don't have to worry about configuring and maintaining a Linux box. Some people are willing to pay a premium to avoid those headaches and get back to what they really want to be doing: application development.

$225 premium!? I mean come on. The article focuses a lot on the learning aspect of these exercises, and setting up your own services should really be a part of it. Especially for a one man operation. Typing apt-get install mongo / mysql / rethinkdb after the droplet is really all there is to it.

@overcast For some reason I couldn't reply to your last comment but yea, absolutely, $225/month is ridiculous.

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#32

Post by samsolomon »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
overcast wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$225 premium!? I mean come on. The article focuses a lot on the learning aspect of these exercises, and setting up your own services should really be a part of it. Especially for a one man operation. Typing apt-get install mongo / mysql / rethinkdb after the droplet is really all there is to it.

> Typing apt-get install mongo / mysql / rethinkdb after the droplet is really all there is to it. This is one of the reasons why web security is as bad as it is. Even so heroku is not the right choice for this, way too expensive.

Curious what you think the right choice for this is? Appfog, EngineYard?

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#33

Post by detaro »

wuliwong wrote: post #29
mcone wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former Linode employee, so you don't have to sell me on the advantages of the VPS. :) I think we need to remember that people new to programming don't know about all of the available tools and services. Costs could have been reduced by using a VPS, but they also could have been reduced without becoming a *nix expert. For instance, the author talked about buying SSL certificates, something that comes free with a…

I've had a site running on Heroku that has 200-300 visitors a day for almost 2 years. I'm still on the free dyno package. I wonder if I am just below some tipping point where I would need to bump up to the non-free stuff. My site runs fine and there are never spikes of traffic, it's pretty constant all throughout a 24 hour period.

Did they grandfather "old" free dynos, or can you live with the forced off-time?

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#34

Post by overcast »

wuliwong wrote: post #29
mcone wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former Linode employee, so you don't have to sell me on the advantages of the VPS. :) I think we need to remember that people new to programming don't know about all of the available tools and services. Costs could have been reduced by using a VPS, but they also could have been reduced without becoming a *nix expert. For instance, the author talked about buying SSL certificates, something that comes free with a…

I've had a site running on Heroku that has 200-300 visitors a day for almost 2 years. I'm still on the free dyno package. I wonder if I am just below some tipping point where I would need to bump up to the non-free stuff. My site runs fine and there are never spikes of traffic, it's pretty constant all throughout a 24 hour period.

Your last sentence answered your question. Scale when it's a problem.

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#35

Post by wuliwong »

wuliwong wrote: post #29
mcone wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former Linode employee, so you don't have to sell me on the advantages of the VPS. :) I think we need to remember that people new to programming don't know about all of the available tools and services. Costs could have been reduced by using a VPS, but they also could have been reduced without becoming a *nix expert. For instance, the author talked about buying SSL certificates, something that comes free with a…

I've had a site running on Heroku that has 200-300 visitors a day for almost 2 years. I'm still on the free dyno package. I wonder if I am just below some tipping point where I would need to bump up to the non-free stuff. My site runs fine and there are never spikes of traffic, it's pretty constant all throughout a 24 hour period.

@detaro, couldn't reply directly to your comment but so far they haven't charged me. They sent me a note saying that eventually I would be charged but maybe they got enough backlash that they decided to grandfather in the old dynos?

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#36

Post by dham »

userium wrote: post #10
jnmandal wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty surprised as well. It's basically a simple CRUD app. I think that a single digital ocean box could have done the trick.

True, I should have perhaps looked at cheaper options. Dynos were cheaper on most months, that example was the 'worst' month. The wildcard SSL certificate for subdomains was a bit expensive.

Hey man if you sign up for Cloudflare you can get SSL for free. Plus a lot of other goodies. If you need help with setting up a Digital Ocean box with Phusion Passenger, Capistrano, Ruby, let me know.

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#37

Post by onion2k »

I sent a short list of questions to 1222 recipients.

Great!

The open rate of the email was 45,8%

That's excellent.

...and 27 people replied.

Oh. Oh dear.

~ 96% of respondents told that they would - or already have - recommended the tool for a friend or colleague.

96% of the people who are enthusiastic enough about the service to respond to an email would recommend the service, but the 97.8% of people didn't respond is by far the more important number. If the people who'd tried the app were a random sample of the population then 2.2% might be enough to suggest there's a valid premium business model there, but the people who tried the service weren't randomly selected - they were a self-selected group of people who are interested enough in user testing to sign up for the service. If you can't get a significant response from a group who are (alledgedly) interested in your type of product then you clearly have a big messaging problem.

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#38

Post by skariel1 »

reacweb wrote: post #15
userium wrote: post #2

Author here, happy to get feedback!

"monthly costs of running the service" was your killing argument. Why didn't you migrate to a cheap hosting ? My single host at scaleway (3.59€ per month) can handle many toy projects and gives me all freedom.

Scaleway seem to be out of stock now, for a few months already. They don't accept new customers

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#39

Post by jacquesm »

samsolomon wrote: post #32
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Typing apt-get install mongo / mysql / rethinkdb after the droplet is really all there is to it. This is one of the reasons why web security is as bad as it is. Even so heroku is not the right choice for this, way too expensive.

Curious what you think the right choice for this is? Appfog, EngineYard?

Of those three (Appfog, EY and Heroku) I'd probably pick appfog, they have the simplest pricing model and the least chance of surprising you with some insane bill.

Re: How I Built a Side Project

#40

Post by funkyy »

reacweb wrote: post #15
userium wrote: post #2

Author here, happy to get feedback!

"monthly costs of running the service" was your killing argument. Why didn't you migrate to a cheap hosting ? My single host at scaleway (3.59€ per month) can handle many toy projects and gives me all freedom.

I find Scaleway tricky when deploying apps since it is ARM - the price is kick ass, but I wasnt able to go around limitations with my Python apps. Do you ever run in to issues like that? How is uptime?
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