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26 Comments

What hosting platform do you recommend for Saas startups?

Thinking about going with AWS, I just got Bluehost and feel like I made a mistake..

  1. 10

    I usually use AWS but recently I learned about render.com and I love it it's really easy and has modern UX it works just as good as AWS for most of my use cases there offering is not as complete but I didn't have problem with it so far also GCP is a solid choice

  2. 9

    Render.com is great and what Indie Hackers and a couple other ‘famous in the bootstrap space’ apps use.
    Very simple to use, but powerful.
    It just syncs with my Rails git repo automatically after every push.

    1. 7

      I've just started using Render. Really nice experience, even if you're starting out with web development.

  3. 4

    For me personally:

    Static sites: Netlify
    General hosting: Linode
    Scale: AWS

    1. 1

      Really good list. I'd use Vercel Now (formerly Zeit) for static. But that's just a preference.

  4. 4

    If you have some devops basic knowledge - Digital Ocean is a good choice. I use it for about 5 years for many projects. It's not expansive, it's easy to set up a new server or resize the existing one. You can use snapshooter.io to backup your whole DO node.

    If you don't have devops knowledge - Heroku is the best. It's expensive but very easy to use.

  5. 3

    I love Dokku (http://dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/) on Digital Ocean (https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/dokku). Its pretty much an open-source Heroku and Digital Ocean gives you a one-click install for getting it all configured.

  6. 3

    I've heard mostly bad things about Bluehost (though, I've never used it to verify that claim). I'd stay away from the confusion of AWS unless you really know what you're doing.

    Also, depends where you live / where your users mostly are. I really like DigitalOcean for their documentation and global availabilities. Though, if you're concentrating on European market I'm not sure Hetzner can be beat in terms of quality and price. Vultr and Linode are some other options.

    Depending on your tech stack, you can check out my product Cleaver to help ease server provisioning / management and app deployments. It's free for now while in early Beta.

    1. 3

      I’ve been using Linode since 2009, they don’t seem to get mentioned much but I’ve always been really happy with them. I know they’ve also recently launched a managed Kubernetes offering as well.

  7. 2

    What are you deploying? There is no single general answer.

    Static hosting? GitHub Pages/Netlify.
    Simple Rails/Django app? Digital Ocean/Hetzler/etc.
    Something specific that can truly take advantage of many cloud services? AWS.

  8. 2

    For me:

    Frontend: Netlify
    Backend: AWS Lambda
    Database: DynamoDB

  9. 2

    Bluehost is nightmare. I used their services for some clients and still regretting. If you still want to go with classic hosting companies I recommend SiteGround.

    For my personal project, I use Heroku, DigitalOcean.

  10. 1

    Just out of curiosity, why isn't azure preferred over gcp/aws ? As I understand azure provides almost every other service that aws / gcp provides and supports a whole lot of programming languages/platforms. I guess even the pricing is quite competitive. Am I missing something ?

  11. 1

    AWS, Linode, Digital Ocean

  12. 1

    AWS has been great..!

  13. 1

    I went with Ionos.co.uk
    Couldn't be happier till now.

  14. 1

    If you don't have dev ops experience, I'd suggest https://www.cloudways.com/ , you can use GCP, digital ocean, AWS among others.

  15. 1

    I now have Yomi.ai split across these platforms:

    • Netlify
    • Heroku
    • AWS
    • GCP
    • RedisLabs
    1. 1

      Wow. So you're using AWS and GCP? Was there a reason for this?

  16. 1

    For backend stuff I generally use AWS, but for frontend and static sites I tend to use Netlify - its free for my usage, extremely simple to setup, and also very easily to implement into my CI pipelines

  17. 1

    Heroku is a great platform to get started with. They have very affordable pricing plans for smaller applications and and its relatively easy to migrate to GCP or AWS in future if you need to. (Heroku is built on top of AWS, so that would probably be your best migration option down the line)

  18. 1

    From my understanding Bluehost is mostly used for one-click installs for things like Wordpress. I'd suggest checking out Digital Ocean if you want a proper server. It's less confusing than AWS and you pay a fixed price each month (the cheapest starts at $5/mo). Digital Ocean also has a nice referral program where you get $100 credit for your first 60 days. Here's my referral link if you're interested in that https://m.do.co/c/b54905f1bc16.

    I use Digital Ocean for my personal blog but Heroku for my business. It's extremely easy to manage and for my app, very cheap (I pay $14/mo to host 2 apps).

  19. 1

    Really depends on what you are doing. If your core business depends on scaling and using machine learning or data streaming (just some examples) then you are probably better off with AWS, Azure, or GCP.
    If you are just looking for a server running MySQL, PHP then a hosting company like bluehost might be the better choice (as AWS and co are relatively high prices for basic services).

  20. 1

    Bluehost looks like just a website host. AWS, GCP, Azure, Heroku, etc are full blown cloud platforms.

    My choice depends on how serious the side project I'm doing is, for Portabella I've gone AWS purely because I've used AWS at work for 4ish years.

    Other projects I'll choose something new just to learn about what else is out there.

    1. 1

      It's similar to Gumroad (allows people to sell digital products, and online courses).

  21. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

  22. 3

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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