
Show HN: Simple File Hosting on a CDN - redm
https://fast.io
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drfuchs
First time I’ve seen a Terms of Use clause like this one: “Light patterns,
like those which might be displayed when using the Services, may result in
epileptic seizures in some people. Discontinue use of the Services, if advised
by your physician or you experience epileptic symptoms.”

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redm
I don't think there's much danger of epileptic seizures when using Fast.io,
thats lawyers for you. ;)

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kup0
Hrm, I've been using Netlify for static site hosting, and the ability to push
from other cloud storage might actually make me want to switch, or at least
try this out.

For small static sites, I really feel like it's overkill putting them in a
repo or having to drag the "whole site" in everytime from a zip file or
folder. Especially for small incremental changes that happen often.

If my understanding is correct, I can have a folder in another cloud storage
service (or even on my PC), that when I change a single file there- Fast.IO
will notice that change and publish/replicate it to the live site. That's
pretty neat.

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SneezyRobot
Yes, that's exactly right! As we were developing the early versions of our
homepage that's exactly how we used it. I just synced down a Google Drive
folder and hacked away on code and images. Derek could check out the progress
anytime he wanted by visiting the URL. Basically, our homepage was always live
while we were developing it - great for our MVP.

Now that the homepage codebase is more mature and we have more people working
on it, we just created a GitHub repo _in_ that same folder. Now whatever I'm
working on is deployed to fastdev.imfast.io and then when I commit to the
master branch of the repo, it's synced to fastio.imfast.io (which is connected
to our domains Fast.io, Fast.app, Fastio.com etc..). I have a password-
protected private dev site, but I'll keep that one to myself for now :D

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kup0
Great! Thanks for the reply. This sounds like it just might fit my needs
exactly :) I'll give it a trial run here soon

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redm
Hey HN. I created Fast.io as a workflow tool for file hosting. Instead of
pushing files to S3, and configuring CloudFront, I wanted more of a "syncing"
experience, like Dropbox. The other problem I wanted to solve was log parsing;
in other words, I didn't want to log parse. So Fast.io parses the logs for me
and sends them right to Google Analytics.

It works as you would expect, and supports files up to 1GB at a price lower
than S3/CloudFront.

It's been a long time in the making, I hope you like it!

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jameslk
How is this different from Netlify? I've used Netlify as a CDN before, which
syncs from git repository. I'm trying to understand when I'd use this service.

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redm
Hi, a good question, I had a chance to attend the latest JAMstack event in SF,
and Netlify is a great product. We aren't trying to compete with them. At a
technical level, Netlify is a "build" up platform, and we are a CDN down
platform.

Netlify takes a snapshot from VCS and performs a build process. This is imaged
into a container and then Netlify has their "CDN" in front of it.

Fast.io is an origin, so processing is largely event driven, pulled on demand,
cached on our L2 cache, and pushed to the edge. It's a more traditional CDN
model.

There are lots of practical differences. 1) We don't have a build system. 2)
We have much larger file limits, up to 20GB. 3) We focus on object analytics,
not through our own UI, but by integrating with Mixpanel and Google Analytics.
4) Netlify optimizes content in the build process, we optimize as data passes
through. The list goes on.

Netlify also charges a lot (the price just went up) $1000 for an "Enterprise"
CDN. We are built around them.

More practically, we focus on object storage and distribution, which is great
for files but not for site builds.

It's been a long day, I hope that answered your question.

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tpetry
Looks very nice, more competing companies in this space is nice. I mean there
are not that many and it seems only netlify is innovating in this space.

Am i wrong or is the very slick website based on a theme? I could guess i have
seen it before.

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redm
Thanks for the kind words. I would say we are not trying to compete with
Netlify. See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590512)

To answer your question about a theme, see:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590473)

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kuczmama
Congrats on the launch. This is a very beautiful landing page. Did you use a
landing page builder or is it all hand-coded?

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SneezyRobot
Hi, thanks for the kind words! I'm Tom, co-founder of Fast.io. We started with
a basic Bootstrap template and then heavily customized it (hand-coded). I'm
really glad you like it! We've agonized over the messaging, illustrations, and
animation quite a bit. I'm sure we still have a lot we can still improve but
we're really proud of how it came out.

Actually, I should mention that it was really interesting to build our
homepage on our own platform. We started out roughing it in really quickly in
a shared Google Drive folder that deployed to a public URL
([https://fastdev.imfast.io](https://fastdev.imfast.io) for example) then,
once we started to have more people working on it and required version
control, we switched the site over to GitHub and started deploying there. It's
a little mind-bending to just hit save and watch a public site update.

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noodlesUK
This looks like a really cool product!

I just have to say though, this landing page is incredibly pretty. Anyone
involved in its design should be proud. I really like it. It renders
beautifully on both my mobile and desktop.

~~~
SneezyRobot
Thanks again!! Really appreciate it! It was definitely a team effort.

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regecks
So do you have some arrangement with Cloudflare to satisfy the the "Limitation
on Non-HTML Caching" part of their terms?

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redm
Hi, yes, we contract with CloudFlare and Akamai for CDN services at scale, and
package them in a SaaS service that provides the rest of the stack. There is
no Non-HTML caching limits for us. We do have a 1GB file limit on CloudFlare
and a 20GB limit on Akamai. Thanks for your interest!

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blitzo
Is this static only? Can this host WordPress sites?

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e-moe
it's static only. wordpress will not work. though you can use javascript logic
that will be evaluated in browser

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Ayesh
I like the Google analytics integration. I wish other providers would add this
feature too.

Are there any open source tools that you can use to parse a log and perhaps
batch-submit to Google analytics?

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kardos
So this is CDN reselling with ease of use added?

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redm
Hi, not so much CDN reselling as providing a stack that fills out everything
under the CDN.

We terminate the origin by syncing from an existing Cloud Storage (Dropbox,
Google Drive) or Version Control System (GitHub). We also automate the
analytics end by parsing the logs that would normally be in raw format.

The idea is focused at the same use case where you would put content on S3 and
pair it with a CDN, our product is just easier to use, faster to setup, and at
a comparable or lower price point.

Thanks for your interest!

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jongbeau
congrats, the product looks great!

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redm
Thanks so much, we appreciate your support!

