You are probably in search of a free server to host your backend, I was too. But don't worry, I got you covered. Your endless browsing ends here.
Criteria for Choosing a Server
I was building a Chess app in Node.js with Socket.io.
So my criteria for choosing a server was simple, but not easy:
It should be absolutely free for life.
No credit card required.
Web-sockets support.
But every free hosting service, had their own little caveats. Most of them were free for a limited time like AWS free tier (and required credit card), or they were serverless which weren't fitting my use case as they are short-lived and don't usually support web sockets. There are some exceptions to this, but they require some changes in the code to be configured for Serverless.
Then I found this son of a gun free hoisting service called Serv00
It completely supported my use case and I even deployed two of my apps on it. One of them uses MVC architecture and other one is the Chess app with web sockets.
Features
You get so much features, and it supports almost all the popular technologies for absolutely free, some of them are:
Support for Modern Technologies: PHP (5.6 to 8.3), Node.js, Python, Ruby, Java, Go, C/C++, Rust, Perl, Django, Pyramid, RoR, Redmine, Trac, Catalyst, TCL/TK, Lua, Erlang, D, R
3 GB Storage with Unlimited Monthly Transfer
Host 100 Websites with 15 System Processes
10 MySQL, 3 PostgreSQL, and 3 MongoDB Databases
SSH Access with SSH Tunneling and Remote Database Access
Free SSL Certificates and HTTP/2 Support
E-mail via IMAP and POP3 with SSL/TLS and via WWW (webmail)
Daily Backups and 7-Day Backup Retention
No Ads with a Free Subdomain (login.serv00.net)
Git/SVN/HG Repositories and Custom Error Pages
Crontab Tasks and Ability to Run Your Own Software
All for free!
Ease of use
If I talk about ease of use, it is not so simple like deployment on Vercel or Cloudflare. You have to manually enter into the server using SSH to configure your app (or you can use their DEVIL web client and FTP for file transfer).
But I take this as a learning opportunity. If you have never tried SSH, trust me, it's worthwhile to give it a shot.
This is the first part of the blog, I'm planning to write a second part explaining how to set up your own app on Serv00.com and how did it. If you want to read that, do leave a comment mentioning that. It will help and encourage me. :)
Limitations of Free Hosting Servers
Being free comes with its own limitations. The biggest ones are:
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Resource restrictions
This was my biggest concern, as this server comes only with 520mb of RAM. You need to optimize your apps if you want to deploy multiple of them. I have two Node.js apps currently running on it. And it is already utilizing 70% of the RAM.
If you want to save some RAM, I will suggest that you only deploy your backend on it, you can deploy your frontend on some free CDN like Vercel or Cloudflare. They are free till a very large number of requests.
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No admin access
As it is a shared server, you do not get admin access. But in my opinion it is not that much of a hassle because you get an option to “run your own application” and admin usually installs the needed software (which is allowed) for your application.
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Potential downtimes
I haven't faced major downtimes, just 1 hour of downtime in last 2 months.
Overall community support
Community support is great. There is a forum where you can ask your questions. Admin typically replies to people queries in a day or two, and they are helpful. I myself tried the forum multiple times and every time admin solved my query, so that's a plus point.
Conclusion
So if you're looking for a free server, for your personal project or for learning development, Serv00.com is the best one for your needs.
If you liked the blog and find it helpful, do leave a like. It will give me encouragement to write such more blogs. And if you want a guide on how to use Serv00.com and set up your own application. Do let me know in comments. 🍀✌️
Connect with me on LinkedIn: shivamdhaka
Top comments (4)
What’s the catch? Why is it free? How does the platform incentivize the free plan users to move to some paid plan later ?
I also had this thought. After going through their forum, this was the only reason I could found by their admin:
"We hope we can provide it forever ;-)
But of course, we have a plan to run a paid service in parallel with free services."
Looks like they are first making it popular and then they'll introduce another paid service.
Let me know,if you want a guide on how to use Serv00.com and set up your own application. ✌️
Seems promising will try with my project. Was thinking to learn AWS but might try learning setting up using SSH
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