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Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

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Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#31

Post by lyime »

peteforde wrote: post #21
kodah wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ever wondered why facebook.com is fast no matter where you are? They provide app-level tooling to make this superpower available to everyone. They're doing that in the app? GeoDNS has been around for quite some time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoDNS or more thoroughly explained: https://jameshfisher.com/2017/02/08/how-does-geodns-work/

Fly's multi-region capability is BGP Anycast-based, which is vastly superior (and much more complex to deploy, outside of Fly) to DNS-based solutions like GeoDNS. One example of app-level tooling is the fly-replay header, which permits your app to automatically replay requests in different regions. This works really well alongside the FLY-REGION environment variable that is available to each node. https://fly.io/docs…

Would have been a good comment if you dropped the first line.

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#32

Post by nirimda »

kodah wrote: post #12
peteforde wrote: post #6

fly.io is a big deal. It's not as easy as Heroku as there's no managed Postgres, but it's well-documented with a few paths. However, the main reason Fly stands out is their focus on multi-region deployments. Ever wondered why facebook.com is fast no matter where you are? Fly provides app-level tooling to make this superpower available to everyone. It's especially important if you're making heavy use of Web Sockets. E…

> Ever wondered why facebook.com is fast no matter where you are? They provide app-level tooling to make this superpower available to everyone. They're doing that in the app? GeoDNS has been around for quite some time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoDNS or more thoroughly explained: https://jameshfisher.com/2017/02/08/how-does-geodns-work/

GeoDNS is a technology that allows you to point web users to a nearby server. That's great, but you still need to coordinate each server. For instance, if you have distributed app servers and a single database server, you still have long distance communication/slowness whenever you need to run database queries.

One solution to this problem that Fly provides app-level support for is to allow you to have a fast local read-only copy of your database on/near each server, so that only inserts/updates need to run remotely. Your regional copies basically fail whenever there's an update, and Fly's platform re-runs the request on the leading webserver (which replicates the update to the regional database servers).

How well does it work? Never used it. But it would save you the trouble of having to notice the problem, come up with a solution and then implement it.

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#33

Post by jacooper »

timmit wrote: post #18

I write an article on Dev.to about the self host alternative for Heroku/PaaS. Basically these three - caprover - dokku - k8s https://dev.to/timhub/self-host-heroku-alternative-40l4

The way to go is either caprover or pure docker - compose (deployed from a git repo) on Oracle free tier.

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#34

Post by mardix »

For another self hosted alternative, which can be hosted on Digital Ocean, Linode, Hetzner, check out Sailor[1].

Sailor[1] is a tiny PaaS to install on your servers/VPS that uses git push to deploy micro-apps, micro-services, sites with SSL, on your own servers or VPS

[1] https://github.com/mardix/sailor.

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#35

Post by jacooper »

sergioisidoro wrote: post #10

I moved to CapRover, and shortly after ended up moving to Portainer, mostly because CapRover does not have very good collaborative environment (eg. A single password for access) With 20Eur a month and a VPS on Digital Ocean you can get quite far. I also made a small project to spin up a PaaS like environment with docker swarm, Portainer and Traefik if you're interested: https://github.com/sergioisidoro/honey-swarm

If you want better bank for the buck VPS, checkout Hetzner. Or oracle's free tier.

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#36

Post by boxed »

satvikpendem wrote: post #30
cantrememberit wrote: post #27

One of the best alternatives I found is using dokku with a cheap VPS. Dokku even has herokuish buildpacks and supports (automated) deployment of docker images etc. On top of that dokku is open source with a very helpful community, total cost: 0$. Not looking back at all. https://dokku.com/

I tried Dokku out but I didn't like the lack of GUI, I wrote in another comment but I've been using Coolify ( https://coolify.io ) as a great alternative with a built in GUI, also free and open source.

There is dokku pro if you want a GUI. Personally I bought a copy but never used it. I don't really want a GUI :P

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#37

Post by aerovistae »

So glad to see this thread, reading everything! Question I've been wondering for months and unsuccessfully seeking out people with experience on the topic - I'm going to be launch a socket.io app on heroku soon, a multiplayer card game, and I have _no idea_ what kind of hosting costs to expect in terms of dyno usage. Has anyone done something similar?

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#38

Post by satvikpendem »

boxed wrote: post #36
satvikpendem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Dokku out but I didn't like the lack of GUI, I wrote in another comment but I've been using Coolify ( https://coolify.io ) as a great alternative with a built in GUI, also free and open source.

There is dokku pro if you want a GUI. Personally I bought a copy but never used it. I don't really want a GUI :P

That's true, I used to use Dokku a while ago but after some time I just wanted to take it easy and click buttons haha

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#39

Post by movedx »

Test0129 wrote: post #22
mkl95 wrote: post #15

We have been using "Amazon Web Services". They should market their services more, they definitely have a bright future...

For personal stuff or business? I'm extremely familiar with AWS at the corporate level but I refuse to use it for personal stuff. Not only are the pricing schemes suspect, the results can be surprising. A single front page feature on HN, for example, could suddenly cost you $150,000 because you didn't wade through enough labyrinthine configuration pages to set the right budgets.

So you're saying that if someone buys access to a kitchen, doesn't learn to cook or operate it safely, burns the place down trying to serve 100,000 people, they'll get a big insurance claim made against them and have a $150k bill? You're kidding me? Are you telling me people have to learn to USE these tools if they don't want a nasty surprise? :-P

(I'm being tongue-in-cheek cheeky here.)

I know you're mostly pushing boundaries with your $150k figure, although at this point it wouldn't surprise me, but AWS is a professional tool aimed at professional engineers. They created Lightsail for "personal stuff."

Right tool for the right job, I guess? Although tyou can actually combine the two on a network level (Lightsail and AWS, that is.)

Re: Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?

#40

Post by nwienert »

sergioisidoro wrote: post #10

I moved to CapRover, and shortly after ended up moving to Portainer, mostly because CapRover does not have very good collaborative environment (eg. A single password for access) With 20Eur a month and a VPS on Digital Ocean you can get quite far. I also made a small project to spin up a PaaS like environment with docker swarm, Portainer and Traefik if you're interested: https://github.com/sergioisidoro/honey-swarm

Sweet, this is my exact setup which I love for the simplicity to power ratio. Will check it out.
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