
Ask HN: Is a Heroku like SaaS that works on your VPS a product you will use - markwahl
I am considering creating a product that allows you to git push your projects to your VPS (Be that the server can be bare metal as well from any cloud). I personally find having to pay for each app on Heroku a bit on the expensive end especially for devs who crank out multiple projects per year and want the Heroku like experience to deploy.
My thoughts are a product that allows git push, uses the open source Heroku buildpacks to build the project and then starts the project in a docker container. A proxy infront that routes traffic to the individual projects and also creates and renews SSL certificates. Sort of like forge in the laravel world but this time it works with buildpacks and dockerfiles allowing you to deploy just about anything.
Fellow hackers, thoughts on this idea and also how much will you personally be willing to pay for such a product?
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jamil7
Sounds interesting. I'd checkout Dokku[0] and Flynn[1] if I were you and see
what you could offer differently. I use a single Dokku instance on 5 dollar
droplet that hosts all my side projects ect under my domain. I then would
extract one out if it ever got meaningful traffic. Another thing to consider
is that it seems like the industry as a whole is moving passed the application
level abstraction and onto the function level, eg "serverless". Maybe you
could jump on that angle somehow.

[0] [http://dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/](http://dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/)

[1] [https://flynn.io/](https://flynn.io/)

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markwahl
Agree, I am actually aware of both services. Personally, I am not sold on
functions yet mainly due to the high startup time. I cannot see myself
building a project that leverages a functions framework specific to cloud
provider X. I however could be wrong on functions and its adoption in the
general Dev community.

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jamil7
Alright, but why would I pay for your service over a VPS with one of those
tools or Heroku? What part of the process do you take over or automate?

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markwahl
The plan is to automate from server provisioning to deployment but of course I
cannot build integrations with all the cloud providers out there. In that
case, you could buy the server, provide the IP address and credentials to log
in and then the service does everything. Once the server is provisioned or
added, you create an application from the dashboard and then git push to it.
Will come with monitoring tools and alerts if you choose to set any. For those
who can work Dokku and Flynn by themselves perhaps, it could be enough. But as
compared to Heroku, you could save lots of money when you not paying for each
app. Of course I need to mention the service itself could even be free and
find other ways to make money.

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bucket2015
I have a bunch of side-projects that I've been working on for a while.

To be honest, I prefer sticking with major cloud vendors (currently on GCP)
because:

1\. They already have reasonably straightforward ways to publish apps, e.g. I
use GCP App Engine + managed Postgres DB + storage buckets.

2\. If my project grows or pivots, I like having an option to use other cloud
provider services like queues, BigQuery, VPC networking, etc.

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markwahl
Right, makes sense, wanted to point out the service will also be usable on GCP
as well as you can leverage any cloud host. You could buy a VPS from GCP
compute, connect it and deploy apps like you are using Heroku.

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opscaptain
I personally will forget it. There really isn't a market out there. Most
developers do not have any Apps or if they do are just simple static websites
for which they can easily host in so many places at no cost. Maybe 6 years ago
this would have been a good idea.

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verdverm
an open source heroku would be appealing, open shift I believe is along these
lines

