2
3 Comments

How do I choose where to host my web app?

My MVP for Decision Donkey is currently in development. I’m unsure of where I should host it.

I was leaning towards AWS but wanted to hear the best and easiest way for a non technical founder to host their web app.

Any suggestions?

  1. 2

    This week, I am researching a hosting solution for my new API service. I am lazy to set up a server at the beginning. But the cost is too high if I put to PaaS platforms. Finally I settled with a DO $5 server.

    It depends on your project requirements. But this is what I found:

    1. self-hosted: as mentioned by other indiehackers, Linode & Digital Ocean are cheap and cost-effective. It's not an all-in-one solution like aws. But I hate aws to be enterprisey. Every time I read aws docs, I feel very painful compared with DO experience. DO is startup-friendly, whether the price and the user experience

    Some redditors suggest to use dokku to emulate the experience like heroku. But I found the overhead is too high to study different platforms and tools.

    1. Heroku / Render.com
      You can save your time to set up SSL, web server, database, etc. If you're not price-conscious, Render.com looks good. The price is not too expensive as Heroku. Overall reputation not bad though I didn't have time to try it personally.

    2. aws / google cloud / azure
      Enterprise solution. Self-explanatory

    3. Vercel / Netlify / Github Page / Cloudflare worker
      Used for static sites. I tried Vercel. So far so good. Free and fast. Also support custom domains

    4. dedicated server
      I tried Rackspace a long time ago. It seems like VPS like DO but more expensive. Didn't look back after migrating to DO. More suitable for data-sensitive projects.

    5. a baremetal put in datacenter
      I have a cheap server 10 years ago. Expensive, troublesome, pains. No more comments.

    p.s. I am not affiliated with render.com but searching render may not have useful search results. I used to refer DO to earn some free credits

  2. 2

    I think it comes down to how price conscious you are and how much help you need.

    If you're generally price conscious and you don't need crazy amounts of bandwidth, then use a VPS like Digital Ocean or Linode.

    If you need something extraordinarily cheap or tons of bandwidth then look at a bare metal option with an unmetered network (most people I know doing this are making free to play games).

    If you're doing a b2b app and expect to have a decent revenue to users ratio but just want something easy that removes the need for you to manage a server, then use Render or maybe Heroku.

    If your main goal is to polish and add buzzwords to your resume or you have a lot of free credits, then use AWS.

    1. 1

      Thank you! I will take a look at Digital Ocean. My original thought was AWS because that's all I am familiar with for hosting. I knew there would be more options so I appreciate you providing some.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 15 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments