Defined Positioning, New Logo, New Landing Page
by Kostja PalovićIn March 2019, I came up with the idea that I want to build a better deployment solution specifically for Django Projects.
While I was building it, I got distracted many times by other shiny things, looked at other players in PaaS space, and at some point lost my focus.
But a couple of months ago, I took a break from building the product and started heavily using it and talking to other people.
I realized the truth that building a general product for everyone means to build a product for nobody. How many times have I heard this? Only now I realized it.
I talked to people building PHP products and Ruby.
At some point, it came to my mind that I can't serve them well anyway because I am not experienced nor interested in that niche. That means I can't build a product that will appeal to them.
And finally, I got back to my original idea that I started from: Build the best deployment solution for Django Projects.
Here it is.
Also, we have a new logo and landing page with proper messaging.
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I really like the design and Ui of your Landing page - its so clean & slick!
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Thanks so much :) it’s third iteration and it took us forever to ship it :)
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Congrats on the refocus, Kostja. It definitely makes sense to go down that road and be able to target your customers. Look forward to hearing more from you.
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Thanks so much, Matt! These words and support really mean a lot!
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Your new website is really clean, congrats!
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The new logo looks clean.
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Can only agree on your point and decision.
Congrats on new logo and landing page-
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Thanks ma man.
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Congratulations! I can completely relate to the 'pain' of deploying Django apps.
I liked your website, it is a neat design!
However, at first inspection, and going through the docs, there's still some questions. For example, what do you actually do? Are you going to provision a server for me? Including updating packages, setting up server, reverse proxy, etc.? Your pricing includes the DO/EC pricing? Why is only the /media persistent? In the free version you say no custom domain, but if it's on my own server, why would you have control on that? What about setting up block storage on DO, cron tasks?
Also, the pricing seems too high. At 9/month plus the server you are going to clash face to face with Heroku, what would be the advantage of using your service? The way I read it, it is as limiting as Heroku even if running on my own server.
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Hello, Aquiles!
Thanks a lot for your questions.
There were definitely some things that I need to update in the documentation and these holidays are the perfect time for that.
Let's start with what Appliku actually does.
You provide credentials for your account in AWS or DO. From the Appliku panel, you create a server of the size you want. Appliku creates a server and sets up everything needed to run the app: Nginx, certbot, docker, and stuff.
When you created an app in appliku (picked a GitHub repo, branch, and server you want to deploy to) it will make YOUR server clone the repo, builds it with the interpreter version you specified, and uses Procfile in the root of your repo to build a docker-compose to run your app. You can select what lines from Procfile to enable.
Also, there is an option to create any number of databases, again – on your server. You can pick from Postgresql, Postgis, Redis, RabbitMQ.
When you add a custom domain, a virtual host for this domain will be added to NGINX pointing to the app. SSL certificate will be issued with help of Let's Encrypt.
Now about pricing.
A single server can be as big as you want and you can fit as many apps on it as you want. And you will still pay $9/mo.
Since you have mentioned Heroku:
Heroku charges for each dyno a minimum of $7/mo.If you have a typical Django setup where you have a web process, a celery worker, and the beat worker it is already $21/mo.
Add a PostgreSQL instance for at least $9/mo.
Add a Redis instance for at least $15/mo.
CloudAMQP: $19/moIt is already $64/mo for a single app!
If we go with Appliku + Digital Ocean:
Appliku single server plan: $9/mo
Droplet 4GB 2vCPUs: $20 /mo
It is $29/mo (vs $64/mo on Heroku) and you have plenty of room to grow for this app and for other apps too!
By the way, we have a feature Heroku Config Vars Sync that will mirror config vars from Heroku to Appliku app.
Using this feature one of our customers moved all their background celery workers to Digital Ocean, got rid of fat expensive dynos, and saves around $7200/mo.
And the whole migration process took 30-40 minutes.
Block Storage: We don't have any use for that at the moment.
Cronjobs: coming soon.
In the free version you say no custom domain, but if it's on my own server, why would you have control on that?
Appliku is a service, that helps you with boring DevOps stuff, that otherwise could be done manually.
On the free plan, it will not do a custom domain setup for you.
Also, right now there is no support for "/media" and any persistence in the app at all, again – need to update docs for that.
Appliku is an opinionated tool about how apps should run and I am convinced that media data should be persisted in S3.
I am still thinking of an option for persisting data on the server, but this feature needs a lot of work to be flexible enough. As you rightfully asked: "why only /media"? So since the demand for this feature in its current state didn't exist at that time and I wasn't planning on expanding its flexibility, for the time being, it is gone.
Let me know if there is anything else I can add to these explanations or if you have other questions too!
Will be happy to see you among customers or just talk about your deployment needs. Hit me on Twitter via DMs and we can talk!
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Thanks for the detailed answer!
I think all what you just explained to me should be part of a blog post, a walk-through guide or something like it, since it is very valuable.
Now I have a good idea of what you do! I'll definitely keep your product in mind. Sadly, I struggled a lot to convince people to move first to custom Django (instead of Wordpresss) and then to Heroku (I am volunteering at a climate-change knowledge exchange project). And I don't have the bandwidth for another tech-change.
I am actually thinking if there's something I can build during this Christmas break to test your service... Let's see!
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Hey! just noticed the reply sorry for the delay.
Glad I was able to explain :)
Yeah, I will save this text, polish it a bit and make a blog post about it. Thanks for the idea :)
Let me know if you need any help when deploying your next big thing!
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