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PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

pikapods.com

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Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#21

Post by m3nu »

indigodaddy wrote: post #19
m3nu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s per pod/app you run and depends on the resources you allocate. Price for minimum required resources is given for each app and starts at $1/month. Yeah, the goal is to make running FOSS as easy as Google Photos, but with more privacy and community-maintained code. Also hoping to channel some funds back to authors, but that’s more complex than expected. Just getting started with it.

I think you should consider OP’s suggestion. Unlimited apps for some X flat rate. I believe this would bring in more users and potentially attract an audience who for instance was considering Cloudron but didn’t want the hassle of even managing/buying the VPS to install it on..

I was considering this, but in a survey most respondents preferred a prepaid model to avoid surprise charges. The flatrate model does that too, though. Maybe worth trying in the future. Like Spotify for open source apps.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#22

Post by m3nu »

eptcyka wrote: post #20
m3nu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a boiler plate privacy page, but not with those technical details yet. First, storage isn’t encrypted and I can’t think of threat scenarios that require it, since we only use bare metal servers and control the drives. Wouldn’t add much benefit at the cost of higher CPU usage. For your account, you can enable TOTP 2FA from Account > Password/2FA . For our production servers, any admin access needs a hardware…

If you control the drives, what will you do when old drives are cycled out? Will you just dump them in a bin for a letter agency to come and harvest my cat photos? IMO, FDE is easy enough to do, even if the users never get to do it themselves. It sort of protects the users from leaking their data in the event that a company goes out of business or someone breaks in to steal hardware.

Usually overwrite the data a few times before decommissioning the server.

I’ll do some testing for the next server to see how much overhead FDE would add.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#23

Post by anon56 »

m3nu wrote: post #7

Founder here. Nice surprise to see this posted. Any questions, drop them here.

I have some questions:

If I understood correctly, this service only allows managed hosting from a curated list of services/apps? I assume that I cannot run my own docker containers. There are a lot of Run Your Own links/text, which made me think first that I could run my own, but instead it seems that I can choose what can be run for me.

Assuming this is OCI based, how are the containers isolated? Is it with cgroups and namespaces (because of rootless), but still sharing the kernel or are users placed inside separate VMs?

What about storage/disk/volume encryption? If I get allocated 10GB of data from the disk, does it have readable, but deleted data from a previous user? How is my data secured on the disk?

I currently have a usage pattern with Jitsi, which I host when I need to have a meeting. I use it a few hours a week and a minute/hour based cloud pricing from many providers are ideal for this. It is relatively cheap to launch even a beefy instance for only a couple of hours at a time.

I didn't see Jitsi on the list, but also the pricing is only listed as monthly. Is there more granular pricing?

What about more closed source software containers, like game servers? I didn't see those on the list. I'm pretty sure Minecraft, Valheim, Satisfactory etc. servers would bring more customers and make the service more popular.

What about managed databases?

I also saw Gitea, but not Gitlab.

Your offering seems to target somewhat similar audience to Linode's Marketplace. Linode calls them "one click apps": https://www.linode.com/marketplace/

Your pricing seems cheaper than Linode's, but is there any other advantage to use your service over theirs? Linode can even manage and configure DNS settings for custom domains automatically for you for their one click apps.

I like your website and it works well on mobile. This service also seems at glance like a great idea. I wish there was a bit more information to help me understand what this service does exactly and how it differs from the competition.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#28

Post by m3nu »

anon56 wrote: post #23
m3nu wrote: post #7

Founder here. Nice surprise to see this posted. Any questions, drop them here.

I have some questions: If I understood correctly, this service only allows managed hosting from a curated list of services/apps? I assume that I cannot run my own docker containers. There are a lot of Run Your Own links/text, which made me think first that I could run my own, but instead it seems that I can choose what can be run for me. Assuming this is OCI based, how are the containers isolated? Is it with cgroups…

> sharing the kernel or are users placed inside separate VMs?

The isolation is with users and SELinux. There are no VMs as those are pretty heavy.

> the pricing is only listed as monthly. Is there more granular pricing?

Pricing is with hourly granularity, but shown as monthly for simplicity.

> What about storage/disk/volume encryption?

We run only bare-metal servers, so this is less of a concern unless you expect the whole server to be stolen. Data still needs to be accessible all the time.

> What about managed databases?

It's more focused on end users, rather than devs. So trying not to go overboard with very technical apps.

> I also saw Gitea, but not Gitlab. > What about more closed source software containers, like game servers?

Still many apps to be added. I also try not to compete with hosting offered by FOSS authors, unless they push other options themselves. Added a note on Gitlab on our feedback tracker: https://feedback.pikapods.com/

> Your pricing seems cheaper than Linode's, but is there any other advantage to use your service over theirs?

Linode seems to use VMs and asks you to make an install script. So it will be heavier than simple containers I use.

Hope I covered a few questions. There was a lot in this comment...

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#29

Post by m3nu »

zokier wrote: post #25

Sounds a lot like sandcats (/sandstorm), albeit slightly less ambitious?

Sandstorm uses VM templates (Vagrant)[1], so pretty heavy and harder to update.

I use Docker images, as provided by the upstream project. So you get the same experience as running it yourself, as well as quick updates.

1: https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/vagrant-spk/packaging-tu...

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#30

Post by kall »

Looks great. I would love to see some development tooling (if it's license allows), that I'm currently considering self hosting: Posthog, Sentry and Jitsu (aka EventNative). If Sentry setup is too insane maybe GlitchTip. I don't know if you run Clickhouse (needed for PostHog) yet, but I bet it will be used by a bunch of self hosted apps in the future and would be worth it.

A very attractive option would be some kind of "Try on PikaPods" button, if you can somehow muster a very limited free tier, that these projects can put on their READMEs. A few have that with heroku and it makes them way more approachable.

The pricing is very attractive compared to running these things e.g. on RDS+Fargate (~25x). Most people would probably run on Digital Ocean or Hetzner Cloud which is closer.

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