Heroku and Render are no brainer hosting options
I frequently see posts seeking advice about hosting options for new projects. I have been using AWS, Digital Ocean & Heroku for 6+ years and recently decided to go with Heroku for my latest product SlimProxy. Here are my top reasons on why you should always prefer a PaaS platform like Heroku/Render instead of a cloud provider like AWS/Azure/Digital Ocean when starting out with a new project.
Time to Market
If you are just starting out, odds are you are working solo and you have to minimize the time required to launch the product. PaaS platforms offer "one click" deploys for standard stacks that can go live in less than 10 minutes. In contrast, you need to spend at least a few hours setting up your software on servers if you choose a cloud platform like AWS/DO.
Management Overhead
PaaS platforms have zero management overhead. You can purely focus on building your product and all the heavy lifting of provisioning, backups, SSL Cert renewals, deployments etc are handled seamlessly for you. No more fiddling around with library versions or figuring out how to connect your server to your database.
Cost
While cloud platforms like AWS provide a free tier, there are multiple reasons to avoid them when you are building a new product.
- Their Free Tier is usually severely limited.
- You need to keep a close eye on cost as it can balloon up in unexpected ways if you are not familiar with the platform.
In contrast, both Heroku & Render offer a $7/Month hosting option for standard stacks like Rails/Django which is more than capable of handling a handful of simultaneous users. This is exactly what's needed when you are starting out with a new product as you are trading cost for simplicity. I had always used AWS in the past but decided to go with Heroku for my latest product SlimProxy. I pay $7 USD/month and it's well worth the hours of time I would otherwise spending setting up, maintaining a server and handling deployments.
IMO, you should only look at AWS/Azure/GCP/DO etc when you have a large enough paying user base and if you can afford to have at least one person to look after your cloud infrastructure. Heroku/Render have invested significant time & effort in streamlining their platforms for ease of use and the Dev community should take more advantage of this IMO.
Still not convinced? I recently discovered that IndieHackers is hosted on Render! I gave it a spin today and I have to say that the experience was quite seamless. I was able to get an app ready within minutes and will definitely be using it for more projects going forward.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Heroku/Render. Just a satisfied customer of Heroku and excited about Render.
Hope that was useful and feedback is welcome!
Barring any technical shortcomings, I see it as a balance between time spent and money. Let's say I can use Linode for $5 and Render for $25 for similar performance. I could save $20 a month with Linode.
Now, I've not used Linode, but I know how ungodly easy it is to add a project and connect a repo with auto-build in Render.
Let's say you're time is worth $50/hour. That means the $20 premium you're paying for Render is worth about 24 mins.
Then the question becomes, "Will I spend 24 more minutes on managing a Linode server than I would Render"?
Every time I try a different PaaS or cloud host this question brings me back to easy-to-use PaaS like Render.
Totally agree on the buy vs build analysis. The one caveat I would add is that if you can manage your infrastructure through code (eg terraform) then you can get the benefits of PaaS speed with the cost savings and performance of IaaS. Although the up-front investment is really only worth it if you plan on using it a lot (eg trying a new business idea each month)
We're using render to host Burndown and it's great. I used Heroku a bunch in the past and we run a fair amount of infrastructure in AWS for other projects, so I'm familiar with the trade offs. For most projects, I strongly agree: use a Platform as a Service like Render/Heroku and pay to not have to do ops.
One limitation of Render that could block some projects from the beginning: if you want to expose any other port/protocol beyond standard HTTP/HTTPS to the internet, you can't do it. So if you want to process email, host DNS, etc then you're out of luck...unless you can find a third party service provider to pay (e.g, outsource mail to Sendgrid, Mailgun, etc) Note that you CAN expose any port and speak any protocol internally, so you can do a microservice architecture if you want.
Yep, the limitations that PaaS systems impose mean that you cannot run anything other than web applications that rely on standard stacks.
But I'm mostly advocating PaaS platforms for Indie Hackers that are just starting out. A majority of these applications happen to be standard stacks that use a backend framework + database of some sort and PaaS platforms excel at deploying these kinds of systems.
If I am building anything more complicated(lots of background workers, custom services that run on non-standard ports and not use HTTP etc), then I would just directly go for servers instead of PaaS platforms.
Glad to see that you are having good experience with Render. I'm planning to use if I start a new project soon.
Support for publicly available non HTTP apps is on our roadmap. Our goal at Render is to keep adding features so you never have to think about AWS et al.
Yep! I've used both, and I love just dropping an API in Heroku/Render and... that's it. I've used AWS before and there's a lot of setup with IAM/Billing/IaC.
The automatic scaling is great with, say, AWS Lambda, but for small/early-stage projects, scale isn't the first thing I'm worried about. Good share!
Render has autoscaling too.
I prefer a VPS. Honest, DO/Linode are very easy to set up if you have familiarity with Linux and you can just install the database on the same machine. $5/month will scale you much further than $14/month on Render and you can even do image processing on the same box.
IH performance is VERY slow on anything that isn’t cached, so I would say it’s an anti-advertisement for Render. I know some people like it but I just don’t get it. How much do they charge you per TB of bandwidth? Many times more than AWS, which already has a 50x mark up.
Heroku just price gouges even more. And it was down yesterday!
I only have experience with AWS, DO and WordPress hosting sites so I can't speak to the ease/performance of Heroku and Render, but I agree with SquishyCoder that DO droplets are easy to set up. DO also has a quick deploy PaaS throught thier app platform, which I've heard from a non-developer is easy to use. AWS and DO have great documentation/how-to guides to get started. I did a lot of researcher prior to picking DO for my backend and AWS for my frontend and it mostly came down to cost, scalability and customizability, at which IaaS beats PaaS in my opinion. (I have no affiliation with any provider either. I also admit I probably over-engineer my dev ops).
If I am serving 1 TB of bandwidth, it should definitely mean that I am already generating revenue/profits or my product is an outlier that needs large egress capacity.
This post is meant for IH users who are just starting out with standard stacks and who would like to get up and running quickly.
Having a technical background definitely helps you set things up faster but I find that setting up a server is still slower than deploying on a PaaS platform. Time is a critical resource when building a product and IMO, should be spent on building the product rather than the infrastructure around it.
One TB isn’t that much… do anything with video or even audio chat and you’ll get there quickly.
Heck, just running an Ethereum node and doing nothing else will cost you thousands of USD/month on Heroku or Render but only about $30 if you use something like Hetzner.
The distinct advantage that a PaaS like Heroku has over a VPS is just how effortless it is to scale up on demand.
I started off with Heroku, but I started to want to install dependencies onto my VM and have more control over my machine. Now I deploy to Lightsail VMs, the pricing is pretty good and they're easy to work with.
It definitely requires more devops work though.
That is the Amazon clone of DO?
Yup I think that's a good way to think about it
One of our contributors finished a report on this a week or so ago, but we've been holding off publishing b/c of the attack on Ukraine. Might be of interest to OP and anyone thinking of choosing/switching managed hosting options.
IH Link
Great post and thanks for the write up! I have not tried Render & DO App Platform and the document is helpful in picking out a solution.
Tyvm for reading and the feedback!
There will be more, hopefully, useful posts like this in the future so sign-up for the series if you'd like them in your inbox
You summed this up pretty well. I'm a huge fan of Render and PaaS in general.
The two biggest counter arguments i hear are "I host everything on a single Linode for $5" and "my AWS setup is much more efficient". What these people miss is the effort it takes to set these things up. I have worked in DevOps before and am very comfortable with Linux servers. Yet, I would never host my startup on Linux VPS servers. The cost saving (and perhaps greater flexibility) just isn't worth the extra effort for small companies.
However, one thing I find very interesting that Render and co don't do yet is global distribution. For example, Vercel and Cloudflare are amazing for static front-ends and cloud functions that run as close as possible to your users. One server in San Francisco is becoming less and less practical for fast load speeds in our global economy.
For those who are happy to self host, Dokku is an awesome open source alternative to Heroku etc that offers the same easy git-push deployments and even uses the same buildpacks as Heroku. I use it for a few apps and I can save A TON compared to Heroku because I can host multiple apps on the same cheap virtual server. So if you want something similar to Heroku, are familiar with server administration basics (really, just a firewall and hardening ssh, the Dokku installer does all the rest), then Dokku is a great alternative.
I'm glad folks get value out of PaaS. They're definitely convenient, but you pay for it.
Here are some disadvantages of these platforms:
More expensive. You pay a minimum of $7 / month and get about half the performance / memory than a $5/month server.
You have to pay for a managed database, too. Usually the $7 / month doesn't include a database, so you have to pay extra for a managed database instance on these services. These are like $9 / month for the most basic. So you're at more than triple the ongoing monthly cost of a non-managed server. Personally, I'd rather take the one-time setup time for way cheaper and more performant ongoing operations.
I run a service (ExtensionPay) off a single $5/month DigitalOcean droplet that does around 3 million requests per month. Haven't even come close to maxing out the machine. There is no ongoing maintenance I have to do on the server at all. I even use SQLite so I don't have to manage a database server.
There are also one-click droplet setups for common apps on the DigitalOcean marketplace that make setting up servers take way less time.
Heroku & Render both offer DBs in free tier with some caveats. There is absolutely no doubt that a single VPS will outperform something deployed on a PaaS platform on Hobby/Free tier. But this post is aimed at people just starting out with a product who would be happy to trade performance for setup/deployment and management time. Not many apps hit 3 Million requests/month on day 1.
DO App Platform is something I don't have experience with yet but on my list of things to try out.
I see you use $7 plan how many active users can it handle just curious to know? Have you performed any load testing or something?
I have not really load tested the application. Load Testing is not usually something I do for new MVPs that I build as it's a technical problem that can always be fixed once I figure out if the product will make money. The first couple of months are purely focused on customer feedback and product validation.
I am not sure if I agree with the article.
DigitalOcean (and other hosting providers) have an app marketplace too and support one-click installs.
I think that putting them together is odd, DO is fundamentally different from AWS/GCP. Also, in my experience, VPS or dedicated hosting can be a lot cheaper than AWS/GCP for almost any project size.
I might also be biased because I am a technical person and I like having as much control over the servers and their cost as possible.
I agree that putting those 4 together is a bit odd as DO is clearly not as vast as the other providers. But I was purely talking about the merits of PaaS systems against their VPS solutions.
DO Marketplace is something I would like to try out and would happily endorse it if deployment & management overhead is as minimal as it is in Heroku/Render. I have not tried it yet though.
And yep, I am technical as well but care less about the tools I use as long as I can get to the end goal(MVP deployed in secure & privacy friendly fashion without management overhead).
What about https://netlify.com? to me there the best for landing pages. For the dashboard and stuff, I use Editor X and have since the beginning. I know Wix might not seem like an option, but read my https://dev.to/sewellstephens/how-to-build-a-saas-product-as-a-frontend-developer-j0n here. I seem to be the only one using Wix.
I even made a Zapier integration and API solely through Wix.
Being a developer, I personally don't use visual landing page builders, I just write the HTML/CSS myself as I prefer it to be as lean and optimized as possible.
"visual landing page builders"... Sorry on confusion, just use Editor X for product dashboards. I use Tailwind and Netlify for landing pages.
More info here.
Use this for https://twayobiz.com and https://obeatow.me
Recently, I switched to firebase and netlify. For the generous free tiers, I ditched servers.
this is valuable insight, wish read it on my first journey
Just a FYI Digital Ocean has a Paas. Digital Ocean App Platform. https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform
Ah, I had not used it before. Something to put on my to-do list. Thanks for letting me know!
i would seriously consider fly.io
Hey, nice insight. I actually come from the complete opposite side: I've always built everything on Azure as I think that the free tier that they provide is more than enough to cover for the first paying users.
After that, scaling is just super easy, without needing to change provider and they usually have all the service that you might ever need and more.
Hi Filippo, it's always interesting to see contrasting opinions here!
I totally agree that once you grow large, a platform like AWS/Azure/GCP makes sense. But I have always found that for a standard web application, I would rather pay 7 USD/month and spend 10 minutes setting up a production system than spend a few hours and set up the system for free.
Yep, that makes sense. Just preferences I guess.
Hi! Feel free to test https://qoddi.com (any feedback would be very valuable)! We can offers free credits for production apps. Thanks
I am curious, what are you thoughts on Heroku vs Vercel? I tried to deploy my React/Firebase app on Heroku and had so many issues, but with Vercel, it was really seamless not only deploying but also updating automatically via Github
Although I haven't tried Render yet, I've heard performance can be a bit slow. Vercel has definitely been my preferred host in that regard! Also their specific integration with their own products (Next.js, Turborepo) has won me over.
There is a third way. You can install a self-hosted PaaS like Piku on a DO droplet or other Linux VPS. Once you've done this install step once you can deploy a large number of apps at a fraction of the cost of Render or Heroku. If you're optimizing for a large number of experiments (landing pages etc.) this is a good way to go.
It's nice that you found something that works for you.
I find whenever I use something other than AWS, it's missing stuff I need, like...
I agree AWS is complex. I'd like to see some improvement here from the competitors.
What about https://netlify.com? for me, they're a no-brainer as they have a generous free plan. Use Netlify to host all my landing pages, and Wix Velo and Editor X for my SaaS product dashboard. More on https://dev.to/sewellstephens/how-to-build-a-saas-product-as-a-frontend-developer-j0n
I plan on posting more articles soon.
I made Zapier integration and API on Wix as well.
I don't have experience with Netlify but I do know that developers love the product. So, they must be doing a lot of things right.
I'm a bit old school in the sense that I like to go for traditional frameworks while building new products rather than Serverless/API + frontend frameworks. But definitely something I would explore since it falls into the low-ops platforms.
Forgot to mention I use Tailwind with netlify. made post to clarify more as I had some confusion above
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/building-saas-products-with-tailwind-css-wix-velo-editor-x-and-netlify-drop-360c6128b4
When you rent a virtual server from a company that takes over the responsibility for maintaining and keeping your server running, this is referred to as a hosted solution (sometimes also referred to as Cloud hosting). by https://aostv.fun/ & https://hunk-tv.com/ & https://titanium-tv.com/ .....
Different Types of Web Hosting
Shared hosting.
VPS (virtual private server) hosting.
Dedicated hosting.
Cloud hosting.
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Can you elaborate more? I recently started using railway.app and my experience were rather positive. Just curious what are the potential issues that I might run into sooner or later
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