
Ruby, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Free Hosting for geeks - eterps
http://1.ai/
======
mdasen
The initial question that comes to mind is: how will this be sustainable? It's
all well and good to offer this service, but will it be a drain on your
finances 6 months down the road? Will it become a drain if more than 250
people sign up for it? I understand that one can get a server with 128GB of
SSD storage, quad core, and 16GB of RAM for around $100/mo if one looks
enough, but that would only serve 256 people at your quotas. Would you be able
to offer the service if you had to spend $1,000/mo?

As a follow-up: why should I use Dotgeek over Heroku or AppFog? Both of those
are commercial offerings with a free tier, but their commercial pricing makes
me a lot more confident that it will stick around. What are you offering that
trumps their offering?

Kudos for trying things (and I'm not trying to sound harsh at all). Still,
this feels like it would have been more interesting in 2006 than today where
we have many options at free tiers and even more paid services to choose from.
I guess I'm just wondering why I would want to sign up for this rather than
something else. If this is more about learning systems administration, then
it's an awesome project and I'm sure you'll learn a lot and gain great
experience. It's awesome to try things even if they aren't meant to be
commercial alternative services just to get the experience of doing them.

~~~
rdevnull
Hello Mdasen ! thanks for your comment and the very good questions. To start
with a quick answer: "Would you be able to offer the service if you had to
spend $1,000/mo?" Yes :) At the moment we have 3 servers and we are far from
full capacity. Of course nothing can scale to the infinite but, from what I
could observe, there are always people coming and going. We do have bigger
hard disks than 128 gb so the quota in a single server is higher than 250 or
it should be.

Why should you use 1.ai dotgeek over heroku or appfog ? If you do have a
commercial application you should run in a paid service because, in the end,
hosting your commercial or critical app will depend on support. This said our
space is for developers/geeks/learners that want to try something not
necessarily commercial.

Another reason I would see vs. Heroku free (I think is only fair to compare
with the free option) is that here you do have a simple SFTP access and you
run things like in the "old days"- your way. We also give MySQL which is not
part of Heroku free. I also feel that the performance of an app in our server
would be better vs. others free tiers.

I think that both Heroko and AppFog are great concepts as they take away the
servers duty from your hands.

We do not compete with any paid service hence it is only entirely free and
somehow "as is". I agree that this might be useless to many yet I would think
that for a young developer - student or really anyone that wants to try
something without any financial commitment it is a pretty good offer.

Thanks for the kudos (I don't think you have been harsh at all) I think
dropping your app via SFTP (being Ruby, PHP or even a perl app with Dancer) is
a very straightforward process and _could_ be useful. Judging from the great
numbers of signups after this post I think that at least some are curious
which is always great ! Thanks again David

~~~
yahelc
Minor copywriting note: The autoresponder email says "your hosting space
request is now under approval.", instead of "under review".

~~~
rdevnull
will fix it - thanks for the feedback. Just approved your application :)

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msluyter
FYI, so I thought "Ok, I might try it for something simple" and signed up. Got
an error that I hadn't accepted the terms/conditions, which incidentally, are
very easy to miss. So I checked the button again, after re-entering my
password. Then, I mind-farted and wrote "June" for the 5th month of the year,
so the submission failed again. After re-entering my password a second time,
and re-checking the terms and conditions box, and re-entering the captcha
answer, on the third request, got an error that my "About You" wasn't long
enough.*

Then, I gave up.

Full text was: "Learning ruby & javascript. Will host some simple one page
apps with Sinatra. Current project: simple anagram finder." What else do you
need here?

~~~
rdevnull
msluyter: sorry to hear about the signup troubles but the motivation length is
min 140 chars. We don't think that this is too long (one tweet?). Adding a
more line or few more words should do the trick (e.g. write something about
yourself or if you prefer a poem!). At least we don't use re-captcha - each
time I sign up for a site using that I need at least 4 or 5 attempts ! Thanks
to this HN submission we are received a lot of applications so you can make it
too! (if you want of course).

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pilif
I'm maybe cynical here, but this service will go away within a year. And it
won't be because of too high direct costs for the host. It will be because of
too much hassle.

When you do something like this these days, you only attract trouble (and a
very few well-meaning people): spammers, script-kiddies, pirates looking for
cheap storage or seedboxes and hacker groups valuing the anonymity for their
releases which in turn will attract DoS attacks which will be a huge hassle
for the provider to deal with.

So within a year, you won't only have to deal with too many users taking too
many resources, you will also have to deal with annoyed providers, with law
enforcement constantly asking for data you can't provide and of course with
constant DMCA takedown requests.

And that's why we can't have nice things any more :/

~~~
jakebellacera
Well it looks like they have an approval process so I feel that they can
easily ban users that abuse their service. With that said, I'm sure that's an
issue they will have to eventually face, but that is the liability that all
hosting companies have.

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pn
Why there's no python?

~~~
rdevnull
mostly for our limited knowledge of python but we could certainly add it in
the future if there is some interest ! While there is no official support we
want to be able to fix things if they do not work. This said I had a look last
night and we could probably add it soon as it seems simple enough

~~~
n3bu
+1 for python support

~~~
PixelRobot
+1

~~~
rdevnull
we are adding python support in this very moment. Tests are fine with flask
trying django now :) should be live tomorrow.

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mukundmohan
Your signup process is really frustrating. First, your About you should give
me an indication of how many characters have been completed and how many are
left. Second, your Captcha is asking for the X month of the year. Most people
I know dont say September (when typing at least), instead just say Sep. There
is no visual clue or early warning before you bounce me 4 times. Frustrating.

~~~
rdevnull
sorry to hear that but the the x month of the year would still be September
and I don't know anyone that would say "see you in sep". The "about you" is
140 characters - like a tweet which is essentially just a couple of lines.
There is a link go the explanation below that field. Writing "I want it" or "I
need it " is not sufficient. Please understand this is required to be sure
that the service doesn't die on the weight of spammers or people planning to
use this for other trouble making activities. Over 300 people made it since
this news was published so...yes you can (if you want).

------
Sharma
I sent request for approval and its pending for 9 days..don't think its for
everyone.Anyways python support will create more interest.

~~~
rdevnull
sorry to hear that - perhaps the motivation/about you was too short? We have
some pending applicants because of the short or vague information provided
..at any rate just drop me a line at dotgeek at 1 dot ai and I will activate
it asap.

~~~
Sharma
Thanks for the quick response and you are right I did not provide project
specific details because I do not have at this moment.But yeah I was hoping to
get some place so that if I start something I could use that.

~~~
rdevnull
I think I have found your application - approved now && live at
<http://monami.1.ai> :)

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USNetizen
When are you going to support some enterprise-grade technologies like Python
and PostgreSQL? Sure, those tools you have now are great for hobbyists and
part-time hackers (with maybe the exception of Ruby), but a real dev sandbox
should have some better tools to work with. Take Google for instance, they
chose Java and Python.

~~~
rdevnull
well mysql is used by google and twitter too so I don't really see them as
hobbyists only (+ we use it daily for business and not just for an hobby).
Python support is in the cards and we are just looking at it right now. BUT
again this is _not_ an enterprise-grade service and really not comparable to
google. But thanks for your input - this clearly isn't for everyone but can be
useful to many.

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jlogsdon
Oh man, I remember using dotgeek a long time ago for some minor PHP stuff.
Awesome to see it expand (and still exist).

~~~
rdevnull
yeah it was in 2003! first to launch PHP 5 hosting with the nightly build!
these were the days with no cloud and now everything has changed ... so yes we
are back with a better service and more servers ! thanks for looking at this
(I think I even remember your name from our old users !)

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rbxbx
Any plans to support JVM based languages? I imagine something like Tomcat
would work with your ideology of uploading a file (in this case a .jar) via
FTP and being up and running. Adding JVM support would add many languages to
your supported list quickly :)

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rdevnull
thanks for posting this - I am behind 1.ai so if you have any question ask
away :)

~~~
dexen
Why is there no paid subscription option? Do you have any plans of such?

I'd like to upgrade to a paid, supported service if my website gets any
traction.

~~~
rdevnull
Hi dexen, the reason is that there are already many excellent (or so we hear)
options for paid hosting /apps deployment and we think that there isn't a need
for yet another another good service (unless you can really make a difference.
We had some ideas in this direction like with having all the apps cloned in 3
live servers in different locations including the mysql database but this was
just an idea) but we do give some support through the forums and occasionally
via email :)

~~~
rdevnull
and actually mdasen did summarize many of the good paid alternatives which are
backed by solid money and infrastructure.... but to be fairly honest the
another big reason is that we are all busy with our full time careers and do
not need the money / start a new commercial activity well the "fun" becomes
work !

------
dlsym
Step 1. Attract geeks / nerds / hackers.

Step 2. Get sourcecode

Step 3. Win!

~~~
rdevnull
hello dlsym, well we have no secret plan for World domination through code if
is what you meant :) on a serious note for very sensitive code (e.g. private)
I would recommend a dedicated server or an instance. It goes without saying
that we do not touch hosted code (beside a general, automated file check that
ensure that there isn't anything malicious going on).

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Zakharov
This looks really cool, it seems perfect for hosting games in the playtesting
phase, as a free host without onerous bandwidth restrictions. +1 for Python
support.

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mehulkar
I don't really need this (right now), but I'd like to commend you on using a
sensible Captcha and not some ridiculous fuzzy image.

~~~
pbreit
I wonder if a captcha is really even necessary here considering that all users
are reviewed?

~~~
rdevnull
good point - probably not but judging from the number of people that applied
anyway and yet pasted a lot of random text in the "about you box" (or copy and
paste galore of lore ipsum) probably make it a little harder to them to submit
bogus applications makes sense :)

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aninimus
It looks awesome, kudos! Just a quick question, are there any plans to support
node.js / Express? :)

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pygorex
Is it possible to point my own domain(s) at an instance, instead of having to
use a 1.ai subdomain?

~~~
rdevnull
at this point we don't configure domains for the users other than the
subdomain but you could forward it using a free service - but if you really
need it drop us a line after you try it out and are happy about it.

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paulovsk
It's disturbing that you're not making any money out of it, but I'm all for
it.

Kudos for you.

~~~
rdevnull
thank you for the kind words ! Oh well if it was a paid hosting it would be
yet another hosting service and would have probably not even made it to
hackernews. There is a lot of "money can't buy" fun and pleasure to see what
smart developers build + helping people starting out and learning something
new. Isn't it ironic that so many things are free online (e.g. having a blog,
storing files etc.) yet hosting is not ?

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wcchandler
Do you provide access to a full shell/ssh? If so, is 'screen' or 'tmux'
available?

~~~
rdevnull
no we do not - it is SFTP only at this stage. The idea is pretty much "drop
and run" your apps being Ruby, PHP or Perl.

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saltcod
Just signed up. Looking forward to giving it a try.

~~~
rdevnull
Thank you - it has been approved && is now live at <http://saltcod.1.ai> \-
you should have received the full info via email

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charlesju
What's the catch?

~~~
rdevnull
There is really no catch other that there is no professional support (see..
for a slightly longer explanation <http://1.ai/specs>) and that we take no
responsibility for your data (e.g. you should always keep a backup. this
doesn't mean that we do not care about the service just we do not want to be
liable if something goes wrong).

~~~
bratsche
What's paying to keep the service running?

~~~
rdevnull
It is paid by myself and I do not need to make any money out of this - similar
to the official mirror I am running for the PHP project. The service doesn't
need ads/paid subscriptions but again it is not to be compared with a paid
service as we do not provide professional support.

