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Running costs for running a web app

cushionapp.com

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Re: Running costs for running a web app

#141

Post by morgante »

tylermauthe wrote: post #33

As some have said, this seems expensive. However, I would point out that the costs of using Heroku should be outweighed by the convenience and ability to focus on features. You are getting what you pay for here, the velocity you gain from not worrying about your infrastructure. I do think that when you are first launching a startup, you should probably do everything as cheaply as possible, which probably means using…

Until you have real usage, Heroku and its ilk will be very cheap. Hence, there's no reason to start on anything besides Heroku.

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#142

Post by AznHisoka »

bpicolo wrote: post #132
AznHisoka wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As soon as your infrastructure becomes more complicated, you can use Heroku instead of hiring people to manage it for a while" Having a Iaas/Paas doesn't mean you don't have to manage anything - that's a myth. Sure, it might be doable if you own a trivial app with just 1 web server + 1 app server + 1 database server. But once you're doing anything remotely complex like building a 10-node Elasticsearch cluster that i…

Wouldn't call that true. There are hosted solutions for ES, Cass, and AWS has kafka alternatives. That's not to say no enginenering time will be spent, but certainly you can start without a full time infrastructure guy

Yes, you can start, but once your app matures and you rely on it for production, you definitely need an engineer that you can rely on if things blow up.

I know companies that don't rely on any hosted cloud services for our infrastructure, and have just 1-2 people they rely on to be that infrastructure guy, and even they are not 100% full-time. It's only when things blow up that they tell him to stop what he's currently doing, and address the issues. Unless you have 10K+ employees, you'll be hard pressed to find companies that have full-time engineers that just twiddle their thumbs, and stare at a monitoring dashboard 40 hours a week to monitor a component.

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#143

Post by morgante »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #62
destroytoday wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time, I was eager to build the app and focus on its features and getting it online. I don't know much about renting hardware, setting up a system, and scaling, so I was gladly willing to pay to make that easier on myself. The $3400 lost actually bought me a lot more of my own time, which I consider more valuable in the long run. I'd be interested in reading a blog post about how you'd slash the cost, if you ev…

Then it was a good decision for you. Time vs money should always be weighed carefully. I tell people: "If you have IT expertise, use it to keep efficiency. Otherwise, outsource it and focus on what you do best."

Even if you do have IT expertise, it's often more efficient to outsource it for your own projects (while selling your IT expertise to the highest bidder).

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#144

Post by quicksilver03 »

quicksilver03 wrote: post #85
destroytoday wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I run Cushion. Moving off Heroku is definitely high on my to-do list. So far, since I'm a solo dev, I've taken the mindset of paying for convenience services that would allow me to spend more time working on the app. Now, I'm getting into the phase where I can start reducing these costs and transition to a system that doesn’t induce fear when I need to add another server. Right now, I have two web workers and two…

Thanks so much for sharing this, I will probably use it as an example for a book about hosting costs that I'm trying to finish for far too long. By the way, your use of Heroku makes total sense given that you're basically alone, I hope that the lock-in won't be too difficult to overcome when moving away from it.

I just thought to leave here a link to a sample chapter from the book:

https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com/read.html

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#145

Post by Killswitch »

destroytoday wrote: post #30
Beltiras wrote: post #20

I can slash about 4000 of those dollars down to 600 by renting hardware to run those services on. Makes you responsible for your setup but if you are bootstrapping, you can find better first year uses for 3400 dollars I'm sure.

At the time, I was eager to build the app and focus on its features and getting it online. I don't know much about renting hardware, setting up a system, and scaling, so I was gladly willing to pay to make that easier on myself. The $3400 lost actually bought me a lot more of my own time, which I consider more valuable in the long run. I'd be interested in reading a blog post about how you'd slash the cost, if you ev…

To be completely honest with you, Heroku isn't your problem, yeah SSL is pretty high, but that's okay... The fonts is your killer.

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#146

Post by [deleted] »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #54
yoyo_io wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost of getting one dedicated devops engineer would surpass Heroku budget by 10X. If devops engineer is far fetched as per scale of the company than count in number of hours put in by developers for initial up, upgrade, new emlpoyee on boarding tada tada would easily bet it too. However I wish they would have disclosed traffic handled by Heroku servers as well.

Maybe if you hire them from Silicon Valley. There's plenty of skilled people in areas with low cost of living that can handle the job without 10x the pay of whoever. There should be at least one such person on the team anyway if the business is a web application . Plus, aren't there alternatives to services like Heroku these days that come as appliances or VM's with simple deployment? I'm seriously asking because I d…

[deleted]

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#147

Post by danieltillett »

jeffmould wrote: post #32

I always find breakdowns like this interesting. Just to get a feel for what others are using, their reasoning, and to generalize what others are spending monthly/annually. With more breakdowns like this from more companies, I think it provides a great understanding of costs. It also can give people a good baseline for understanding what costs are at certain levels of users and with certain functionality. While I unde…

Yes it is always great to learn what other people are doing.

I have no issue over the costs with paying for all these services as it is almost always cheaper than building/setting up the same tools yourself, the issue I have is the lack of skills/understanding that going down this route encourages. I like to build everything myself so I learn, not because this is the most efficient way to run things. When something breaks (it always does at some point) it means I can fix it.

There is also the other point which is I love learning about all this stuff :)

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#148

Post by nickpsecurity »

morgante wrote: post #143
nickpsecurity wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it was a good decision for you. Time vs money should always be weighed carefully. I tell people: "If you have IT expertise, use it to keep efficiency. Otherwise, outsource it and focus on what you do best."

Even if you do have IT expertise, it's often more efficient to outsource it for your own projects (while selling your IT expertise to the highest bidder).

It's to be decided on a case by case basis. I used to deploy whole infrastructure outside the wiring in a day with little mgmt overhead. The trick was doing as much ahead of time as possible. Each success fed into next project.

That's why I recommended in a other comment using people that do stuff similar to what you need and split cost among several companies.

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#149

Post by flurdy »

funkyy wrote: post #74
jtchang wrote: post #4

Heroku is without a doubt one of the more expensive options out there. SSL being billed per month? Yikes. SSL really should be standard.

The bill looks huge. You can get SSL for like $8/year from reseller for one of the Symantec ones. I think that starting startup can cut a lot of corners by using open source resources and cheap cloud servers like DO.

I think people are misunderstanding the SSL costs for Cusion.

The SSL certificate expense is listed as $99/year from namecheap, ie. $8.25/month, so there seems no need to get a Symantec one.

However they/it/he are paying Heroku $20/month for handling the SSL traffic, not the certificate itself, which probably includes running a load balancing server in front of their apps that automate the SSL termination across nodes. Which seems like a fair cost to me.

I think the description of this cost is the error which causes the confusion.

Re: Running costs for running a web app

#150

Post by 0xCMP »

jeffmould wrote: post #91
TheCowboy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and would add that it's easy to look at their spend and think that's a waste, but I think with many endeavors, an individual's time is usually the scarcest resource. Web services expenses aren't even close to their cost of adding an additional employee to solve these problems in-house. Learning to automate something a more seasoned *NIX veteran could do in an hour is not always a predictable time expense, and…

That's a good point about individual's time being a resource. There are many things I am good at and there are many things I am not so good at. I would gladly pay a premium to a service to have them handle the things I am not good at, especially when just in the startup phase. So while one person may think that saving a buck here is an option, for me that buck may be the difference between being able to continue busi…

Exactly, isn't that the reason why startups "need" so much money anyways? To get the best people to solve problems? In that case, it's a one off and you solve the issue. Definitely seems like the smarter business move to me too.
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