
Deploystack – Curated list of best tools for launching your website - Vhaeraun
https://deploystack.io/
======
Vhaeraun
Hey everyone,

I have created this website after struggling with deploying my website for the
first time (which one of the 1000+ hosting companies to chose? How to get a
cheap domain? Analytics, monitoring, what other tools I need?) and I thought
it might be useful for others. There are no advertisements and it was not
sponsored by any company, I did a lot of reading, checked different services
and picked up those that offer the best value for money and are recommended by
other developers. I tried to add coupon codes where applicable. I have
submitted DeployStack few months ago and got some good feedback, so I added a
bunch of new tools and redesigned it to be more clear. Let me know if you
think it's interesting and useful.

~~~
GordonS
> There are no advertisements

But some of the links are affiliate links. I don't have a problem with this,
but if you're going to make a big deal about not having ads or sponsorship,
then I think you should have mentioned this too.

~~~
porker
And do the gentleman's thing of indicating affiliate links by appending a * or
other symbol.

Transparency is good, even if the laws in your part of the world don't require
it.

~~~
latch
I think it's good enough that they recommended a number of options without an
affiliate program. Intentions pass my bar of nobleness.

------
mxstbr
I feel like Sentry[0] should be on the error tracking list, it's an amazing
product that's fully open source so you can host it yourself if you're
concerned about privacy or throw some money at the stellar team behind it to
have them host it for you!

[0]: [https://sentry.io](https://sentry.io)

~~~
mcescalante
Somewhat unrelated, I have seen a lot of places list a "con" of Sentry that
its only free plan (non-trial) is self-hosted. This is a pro for me! I LOVE
that I can run Sentry on my own infrastructure :)

~~~
ehfeng
Strange, we definitely have a free tier (and have had one for years). Our
current free plan includes 10k events a month.

But yes, hosting it yourself is the ultimate free tier.

Obvious disclaimer, I work at Sentry.

~~~
mcescalante
Awesome! I clearly read something misinformed; there is totally a free plan.
Makes you guys even more great

------
arihant
Fairly disappointing list. No GC in hosting list, even with generous free tier
on App Engine, Firebase and other services. No DigitalOcean. No Azure. On
e-mail front, no SendGrid and Mailgun, even with their generous free tiers. No
Cloudflare. CI as category is ignored. 1&1 makes it, but GoDaddy, Gandi, and
others don't.

~~~
ploggingdev
> 1&1 makes it, but GoDaddy, Gandi, and others don't.

Godaddy? They use shady tactics to mislead customers, their service is pretty
bad and they are an overall unethical company. I would never recommend them.

~~~
Vhaeraun
Hosting was the most tricky part to describe - first of all, because there are
so many companies and I wanted to keep the list short (otherwise it's not
helpful). The second reason is that everyone has different opinions on the
hosting companies - for example, one person can have a great experience with
Godaddy and someone else will have a very bad one. So I decided to go for the
DigitalOcean and Linode as they have a rather good reputation among developers
and AWS, as they are popular among many developers (+ they come with a huge
amount of other services that you can use). Plus Heroku with their free plan.

~~~
curun1r
If you're going to mention AWS, you should also be mentioning GCE and Azure,
as each can be the cheapest/best under certain circumstances. It'd be even
better if you analyzed their offerings to give people an idea of when to
choose each offering. I'd also like to see at least one static site hosting
company (Netlify?) listed since they can be a lot cheaper than the big cloud
companies if that's all you need.

In general, I didn't find this list particularly useful. There wasn't a single
product on your list that I'm not intimately familiar with, and I'm not the
sort of person that really keeps an ear close to the ground on these sort of
things. The categories of SaaS products you recommend are pretty limited. It
could be useful if you indexed more providers in more categories and then
asked some basic questions to cull the list down to a personalized
recommendation for your reader's needs. But short of that, there's little here
that you wouldn't get from five minutes on StackShare.

~~~
Vhaeraun
I completely agree with you - if you know all of the services that are
mentioned here, you are probably well more experienced developer ("deployer"?)
than me or other people that are the main audience for DeployStack. As for
AWS, I mostly mention their LightSail plan, which is quite simple and
straightforward (as in the case of Linode and DigitalOcean). GCE and Azure are
definitely great tools and I see many people complaining about the lack of
them on the website, but they are way more advanced than the scope of the
DeployStack, at least for now. Thanks for the feedback, I will keep that in
mind and try to add some more advanced sections in the future!

------
ams6110
Be very careful using a "free" tier on any email service if you care about
reliable delivery. These are naturally utilized by people sending spam, so the
mail servers used by the free tier plans tend to get a low(er) reputation. I
had this issue with Mailgun, which otherwise is a fantastic service.

~~~
linkmotif
Mailgun has a whole FAQ type thing about sharing IPs vs getting dedicated.
They kind of claim an opposite/divergent thing from what you write. They say
using shared as you build domain reputation can help because you pool with
more established senders. Did you find that not to be true? Are there many
spammers in that pool? Should I just go dedicated right away?

~~~
scaryclam
I find that mailgun is highly protective over thier IP reputation, so unless
you actually run into an issue yourself, don't bother with dedicated. Some
spammers may use them but I've not seen much evidence of it.

------
fasteo
Pretty cool website. It is properly credited at the bottom of the page, but I
think it deserves an explicit mention.

Creative-tim, material-kit theme [1]

[1] [http://demos.creative-tim.com/material-
kit/index.html](http://demos.creative-tim.com/material-kit/index.html)

------
edcoffin
I just deployed a corporate site last week using Jekyll, hosted on S3 with
CloudFront using a free AWS certificate. Content management is provided by
forestry.io which has been mentioned a couple times on HN and is a compelling
alternative for the CMS functionality and a necessity for the client. When I
think Website, this is the best 'stack' I've deployed with.

------
niftich
This is pretty slick with useful information presented in easy-to-compare
form. The hardest part is going to be keeping the info up to date.

As others have mentioned, some pretty big-name offerings are missing despite
being surprisingly capable. I use Google App Engine's free tier for some
hobbyist-level hosting because it gives me full control over the incoming and
outgoing HTTP request in an autoscaling PaaS, which is very convenient, but it
also cuts off with 503s if my quota is exceeded and I won't get a nasty bill
at the end of the month for stuff I can live without.

A little while ago I made an Ask HN [1] that didn't get much traction where I
described all the desirable features I wanted, to seek an alternative for
Google App Engine. Is there a comparable Paas/FaaS that has a free or cheap
tier, and a no-cost quota cutoff?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13504712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13504712)

~~~
nickbauman
Not really. AppEngine is unique in this way. It has a combination of features
and constraints that make it very difficult to replicate what it can do
elsewhere. GAE is a _product_ not just a collection of APIs.

The closest thing to AppEngine out there is ElasticBeanstalk and Heroku, which
resemble _each other_ far more than they resemble AppEngine. Good luck.

~~~
maartendb
AppEngine doesn't support php7. Call me old fashioned but that's a show
stopper for me.

~~~
nickbauman
You are, indeed, old fashioned. But GAE has a Java SDK, so you can run PHP on
GAE after all.

[https://github.com/collegeman/php-in-java](https://github.com/collegeman/php-
in-java)

------
skolos
This looks awesome and quite helpful for first deploys.

However after deploying bunch of projects and knowing which services to use we
found it is still pain to set up everything together. We thought that
automating this process might be valuable and would reduce barrier on starting
new projects.

So we put together service where for $39 one time payment we would do the
following for you: (assuming you own a domain name - we will need to ask you
to point dns of your domain name to cloudflare)

All the following services will be set up with free tier, so you won't need to
pay anything to run your project unless you will want to upgrade anything:

\- set up CloudFlare account to manage your DNS \- get email for you domain
with Zoho and make sure that deliverability settings adjusted correctly \- set
up web site on zoho with blog \- create Google account and register the
website with Google Webmaster and Google Analytics \- register with Mixpanel
for extra event analytics \- add inspectlet to capture videos of what visitors
doing on your website \- create Stripe account to accept payments \- hook up
web chat from Zoho to chat with your visitors \- create facebook and twitter
accounts

As a deliverable we will send you a password file that you can open with
password safe application (free) and instructions on how to change your
passwords. We will also send overview of all accounts and customization steps.

As a pro (or coder) version of our service we will add setting up Azure, AWS
or Heroku account, source control account, deploying skeleton application to
the cloud (ruby, python, node.js or asp.net). The application will contain
user sign up feature, integration with analytics, logging, transactional
email, error reporting services.

We were planning to launch our website next weekend but I couldn't resist this
discussion. If you are interested, send us email at info@zenprojectstarter.com
or leave us a comment on our blank website
[http://www.zenprojectstarter.com](http://www.zenprojectstarter.com)

------
koolba
It's impressive that only a quarter of the links are affiliate links.

~~~
sampl
Could someone explain the hate for affiliate links? Maybe I'm just being
naive, but as long as there's no suspicion of ratings bias, I'm fine with
them.

Ex: I've used thewirecutter.com recommendations for home supplies--and I'm
happy to give the creators a kickback for their effort (at no cost to me).

~~~
dublinben
Judging by the rest of the comments in this discussion, there are some very
notable oversights missing from this list. It's not unlikely that is caused by
a lack of referral program from those providers.

~~~
brndn
There may be notable services missing, but I wouldn't say it is an oversight.
It seems the most popular or well-known services are covered and not all of
them have referral links. Sure, there is room for improvement, but it seems to
me that the creator put this together in good faith.

------
pastaking
The whole google cloud platform doesn't get enough cred. Would be nice to add
it to the list.

~~~
Kipters
Azure is also missing

~~~
Vhaeraun
I did take a look at Azure, but it looks complicated. Probably for someone who
has more experience and actually have used it, it's not, but I couldn't easily
find how I can get a simple VM, and when I used the calculator for the VM, the
price was almost two times more expensive comparing to DigitalOcean or Linode.
I see that there are many people using Azure and probably it's a great
ecosystem, but I wanted to focus on easier to use tools, that will be more
friendly to beginner web developers. I might think of a section for more
advanced options (not a single hosting, but a whole service that includes
multiple tools) where Azure would be a great fit.

~~~
Kipters
For an application you may not even need their VMs, an AppService instance may
be enough and potentially cost less. BTW, you can find them on the "New" menu
on the left

------
avip
Unclear why GC and Azure, both with amazing offerings, are not listed.

~~~
Vhaeraun
GC and Azure are great tools and I see many people complaining about the lack
of them on DeployStack, but they are quite advanced options comparing to other
services, so they don't really fit well in, let's say the 'Hosting' category
(they have much more tools than just hosting, they could replace your whole
tech stack). And I wanted DeployStack to be used as "choose your own tech
stack" \- if you need only hosting, those are the companies that are good and
cheap with just hosting. If you already have a website but need to get some
statistics - here are tools for uptime monitoring and here are some for
analytics. Anyway, thanks for mentioning GC and Azure, I will keep that in
mind and try to add some more advanced sections in the future, where they
would fit perfectly.

------
leephillips
Nice job and a useful website. One nitpick: there were free ssl certificates
before Let's Encrypt, but not nearly as easy to use.

------
ggregoire
For my SaaS (pre-launch) I chose to go full AWS (BeanStalk, RDS, S3, CF,
Route53, ACM, SES) + GitLab (4 private repos: front, back, deployment scripts,
website).

Total costs: $24 (2 domain names)

I still need some monitoring and logging tools but I'm sure there are free
solutions for my needs.

------
StavrosK
As far as email sending is concerned, Mailgun seems better, with 10k emails
per month free, no?

~~~
delibes
Sparkpost offers 100k on their free account

~~~
StavrosK
That's very interesting! I figured I could save some money from switching
Spamnesty ([http://spa.mnesty.com/](http://spa.mnesty.com/)) to Sparkpost, but
they don't seem to support receiving email?

------
ranrub
I would add a image/video hosting & management category - there are some well
established players in the market that have nice free tiers (full disclosure:
I work at one). Makes life simpler than working with Storage & CDNs.

~~~
umar-khan1
Can you recommend some of them? I've tried using Dropbox for very low-traffic
personal sites before but the workflow was less than ideal.

------
viggity
Really, no Azure? They have great linux support (if that is your thing).

------
jgowans
Feel free to add [https://www.aerobatic.com](https://www.aerobatic.com) to
your list for static hosting.

disclaimer: I work there.

------
tehsuck
Missing: [http://surge.sh/](http://surge.sh/), also might be worth noting you
can host a static site for free on GitHub.

~~~
Vhaeraun
Thanks, I didn't know about the surge, I will check it out for the next update
(also static pages on GitHub is a great tool, I forgot to mention them).

------
michalptacek
This could be the "first to go" website for beginners when launching a new
project :). However it misses some services such as Azure, CloudFare etc.

~~~
Vhaeraun
Thanks for the feedback. CloudFlare (which is a great service) is under the
"Monthly Plans" for the CDN :) Azure and GCE are great tools and I see many
people complaining about the lack of them on DeployStack, but they are quite
advanced options comparing to other services, so they don't really fit well
in, let's say the 'Hosting' category (they have much more tools than just
hosting, they could replace your whole tech stack). And I wanted DeployStack
to be used as "choose your own tech stack" \- if you need only hosting, those
are the companies that are good and cheap with just hosting. If you already
have a website but need to get some statistics - here are tools for uptime
monitoring and here are some for analytics. I will try to find a place for
them in the next update to the website (maybe in a more advanced section).

------
newsat13
Great list. Would like to see some self-hosted options here and not SaaS. Can
I recommend cloudron.io? Just run it off a Digital Ocean or Linode server and
you get all apps in
[https://cloudron.io/store/index.html](https://cloudron.io/store/index.html)
(Mattermost, Nextcloud, Gitlab, Mailtrain, Ghost to name a few). Obviously,
you still need a CDN and Domain but Lets Encrypt integration is built-in.

~~~
Vhaeraun
Hey, thanks for the feedback. Self-hosting is a more advanced area (I would
imagine large companies deciding to self-host, mainly for the privacy reasons,
but not single developers), so it's out of the scope of DeployStack for now
(I'm trying to focus on tools that would be more useful to single developers,
start-ups). However, it could be a nice section for a page covering more
advanced topics, so I will take a note of it for the future. Thanks!

------
esher
I understand: It's curated and opinionated and there should only be three big
players on the list. I strongly feel that hosting is not a commodity. There
are big differences between PaaS and VPS hosting in service level.

Shameless plug: We run [PHP as a
Service]([https://www.fortrabbit.com](https://www.fortrabbit.com)) which is a
managed stack with pre-installed Git push to deploy, Composer and Let's
Encrypt certs for all domains.

------
blackoil
Visual studio team services is with looking at. Includes git, release
management and continuous integration with a free tire

------
hashkb
Design is nice, content is shamefully incomplete. Best case is honest bias,
worst case is author has been compensated.

~~~
bkmartin
Of course he is compensated... there are affiliate links all over the place.

Not that I think that is inherently bad, but you must be careful of bias and
understand lots of good options may not be presented.

------
akeck
What about a static site served by an object store through a CDN? I just did a
pure S3/Cloudfront project.

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drumttocs8
I would assume Firebase, Azure, Digital Ocean, etc would be first on any list

------
reacweb
I am so happy with scaleway that I do not understand it is not in this list.

~~~
Vhaeraun
Thanks for the suggestion, didn't know this one! I will definitely take a look
at it.

------
kn0lf
This is just great for beginners, thanks. Do you think of posting tips to
deploy Anon?

------
meesterdude
great idea - biased execution.

------
donald123
missing a lot of good alternatives. It would be good to add a vote-ish button
for each service to let people see the popularity.

