DEV Community

Discussion on: Cloud Providers for Your Startup

Collapse
 
jborak profile image
John • Edited

Hi Max, I agree with your conclusion. For most developers looking for value and features and want to host in the cloud, DigitalOcean and Linode are great options. Heroku is an application platform, like App Engine, but it's flexible and has a free tier that works but as flexible as a virtual machine. It depends on how you're building your application.

I would add UpCloud, Scaleway and Hetzner to cloud providers that provide good value to developers. These providers are based in Europe but have data centers around the world and are good choices as well.

If you're a developer and just interested in ability to host, and not necessarily looking for a cloud, you can try a service I build called Packetriot (packetriot.com). Instead of virtual machines, it creates an application tunnel that you can host any number of web sites or apps behind.

An application tunnel that effectively makes your locally running app available on the Internet. A lot of developers use Packetriot to quickly test an API backend call or web hook, or to host their MVP or demos.

Depending on how reliable your ISP is and your needs, some users host their applications like this 24/7.

The workflow for developers look something like this (after configuring your client):

npm build
pktriot http 3000 --exec "npm serve" --webroot ./path/to/assets

Running HTTP services:
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Domain                               | Destination   | HTTP   | TLS   | Secure   | Protect   | Site Root   |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| gracious-firefly-58739.pktriot.net   | 127.0.0.1     | 3000   | 0     | true     |           | --          |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

And now you can visit gracious-firefly-58739.pktriot.net and check out your node application running. (Note: this link will not work, just an example :)

If you have more services running simultaneously there are other commands to setup traffic rules to expose them all at the same time.

Certainly not a replacement for cloud providers but a flexible alternative that can provide a lot of value and help iterate faster and save on some hosting costs.

Collapse
 
steelwolf180 profile image
Max Ong Zong Bao

Nice I didn't know about those 2 besides Upcloud. As they were not in my radar probably because of my US centred list of podcast and youtube channels.

I will take a look at them when I had time or I have client within the EU zone that might be interested in those offering or when they are planning to expand to those markets.