
Ask HN: Do you pay someone to install self-hosted apps? - xsoul
Last week I set up a self-hosted private analytics app following the project&#x27;s Github readme, it took me more than 2 hours to get it working properly. I&#x27;m not really into devops. I thought it took too long, and maybe I could have hired someone to do it for me.<p>Do you set up all of your self-hosted apps? Do you know if there&#x27;s a place to hire people to set things up for you? Would you pay for somebody to do that? Is there any security concern?
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XCSme
I am actually building a self-hosted application and this is a really big
question/problem. In a perfect world, you could go to any hosting platform and
with one click you should be able to install any software you want (as you do
on mobile with apps).

I am trying to find a solution for this, but so far most of my clients have at
least some technical knowledge, the rest are a bit afraid, as you mentioned,
to waste too much time on trying to install something.

I also talked to some folks at DigitalOcean to ask on an easier way for a
developer to install the software for the clients, on the clients own DO
account. Unforunately all the solutions they provided were either really
complicated or involved access to the clients account, thus imposing a high
security risk. I told them it would be really cool if I could send a link to
the client that automatically create the server with all the configuration
needed, without them having to press any other buttons or run any commands.

Slightly off-topic: What self-hosted analytics app did you install? You could
also check out the one I built[0], I focused a lot on making installation as
easy as possible.

[0]: [https://www.usertrack.net](https://www.usertrack.net)

~~~
open-source-ux
I've asked about installing server apps for non-technical users before on
Hacker News - each time hoping there might be some progress on this problem,
but unfortunately not.

There are solutions like Bitnami which provide one-click installs for popular
apps like WordPress. As you've found out, for a VPS you still need to set-up
the VPS first before you can do the 'one-click' install (so not really a 'one-
click' solution after all).

The choice of server language also affects the ease of deployment. PHP is the
easiest among dynamic languages. For some hosting providers, installation of a
server app can be as "simple" as uploading scripts to a folder on a server
(for example, using a secure FTP client).

Imagine if installing a web server app was as easy as installing a desktop
app. It would unlock countless opportunities for developers. My impression is
that developers think it's a non-issue or have simply never thought about it.

If I wanted to be really cynical, I might even suggest that some developers
prefer things remain complicated because it makes SaaS solutions much more
attractive to customers when the self-hosted alternative is so much more
complicated. Unfair?

Some previous Ask HNs:

 _How do you handle server install of a web app for customers?_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514025)

 _Let customers self-install your server product. Why it so difficult?_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781420)

~~~
XCSme
I think it's a bit more complicated because we want to be able to install any
app on any hosting. This means that there should be a common one-click-app
ecosystem agreed upon by all hosting providers.

Currently each one has its own marketplace (DigitalOcean marketplace, AWS
marketplace, etc). A partial solution could be containers, such as Docker, but
there still has to be a way to purchase a docker image/container and publish
it on any server (currently the Docker container is only public, which makes
it harder to deploy private apps).

I think the solution would be to decide on an OS (Ubuntu probably) and create
a public container image that could be provided by all hosting provider, which
installs:

1) The OS 2) A web-app with a GUI that contains a (public) marketplace and the
user can then browse through all the apps on the marketplace and install them
in one click on that specific machine.

So, you would go to, let's say, DigitalOcean, you select "New App Server", it
provisions a new Ubuntu machine and then you can access the machine in the
browser machine-1.myuser.do.com where you see a list of applications that can
be installed (which are not DigitalOcean specific, but from a public
repository).

> I might even suggest that some developers prefer things remain complicated

I think this is true in many cases, I've seen a lot of "free software" that
you can host yourself, but it is way too complicated to set it up yourself, so
you end up using their SaaS. I am trying to find better ways to make my
application easier to host, but I keep stumpling upon different problems.

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actionowl
Don't forget that most Unix-like operating systems and Linux distributions use
package managers, typically one installs the package then configures some
number of config files to get the thing up and running. Some are working right
after the install. The problem with packaging web applications is that most
don't take into consideration things like File System Hierarchies and are very
difficult to package. If you have any sort of application and want it to be
easy to install, make it easy to package (even closed source apps can
benefit.) or package it yourself.

Anytime I have to install some software (AWS' agents such as inspector and
cloudwatch are particularly bad about this) and I have to extract some tarball
or curl into `sh` I cringe. RPM/Apt/etc is right there, ready for you to use!
Signature verification, config file handling, etc!

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searchableguy
Check out cloudron: [https://cloudron.io/](https://cloudron.io/)

~~~
XCSme
But this is also that has to be installed, right? Can it install any self-
hosted app, or only the ones that are currently supported by it?

~~~
gramakri
Co-founder of cloudron here. Cloudron can only install apps that are packaged
specifically for it. It is based on Docker and it's easy to package apps -
[https://cloudron.io/documentation/custom-
apps/tutorial/](https://cloudron.io/documentation/custom-apps/tutorial/) .

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wprapido
I was both paying and getting paid to install self-hosted apps. Some of them
at best are time consuming to install. Also you might run into compatibility
issues of all kinds

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ternarybash
If you're using a bare droplet or packaged container they offer, couldn't you
just just set up an ansible script? Although, I might be over simplifying your
uses.

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segmondy
did you check if it had a docker install? there are lots of self-hosted apps
you can just install with containers.

