
Ask HN: Best option to host an MVP within budget? - tiuPapa
I have built an MVP, it&#x27;s a social network, with specific features that target a niche group of user (atm, I just want to see if this works and then make it more general in case it is actually useful the way I think it is).<p>Problem is I have no experience in hosting and I am not sure what are the things I should be aware of when choosing any particular option.
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eropple
If you just want An Answer, then use Heroku. Throw it up there and see if
there's traction before you worry about hosting. Once you find traction,
there's a lot more to consider, but for now you're talking about minimal
traffic and you can deal with this later.

At that point, you start getting into breakdowns of the various providers out
there, and--most importantly--what they offer you in terms of failure
resilience. If you know nothing else about software deployment, know that
_everything can fail_ (whether in a data center or in AWS or whatever) and
that correctly and quickly responding to those failure cases is the core of a
modern operations/platform effort.

At the point where a product works and has traction, I'll usually evaluate AWS
or GCE (and tend to go with AWS because the tooling, publicly available
knowledge, and my personal experience lean that way), because I like having
easy answers for "but what if it breaks?" and "how do I protect myself?" in a
way that neither less featureful/lower-quality services like either
DigitalOcean or a bare-metal provider like OVH can offer. But people with
different budgets and risk tolerances can reasonably disagree.

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tiuPapa
Well, besides an answer I am also looking to learn. The opinion I hear about
Heroku, and also my primary concern, is it can become quite expensive to run,
especially since I have to use two dynos - one for backend API and one for
serving the frontend app. Compared to that will starting with AWS or GCE free
tier be a better option? I am ready to deal with a complexity if that means I
can squeeze a bit more value out of stuff since budget is a bit too tight atm.

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eropple
If it gets expensive, you have a Good Problem on your hands.

I don't think trying to learn AWS's stuff should gate you on seeing if your
product gets traction. What's stopping you from launching on something simple
and easy like Heroku _while_ you learn AWS or GCE?

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tiuPapa
Ah yeah I didn't think it that way. Thanks.

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eropple
No problem. Feel free to email me directly if you'd like; this is a large part
of my business.

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tiuPapa
Thanks, I will keep that in mind. :)

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m88m
for me - either firebase or AWS. depends on what I am trying to build. Good
luck!

