
Ask HN: What free services can I use for a back-end? - ateesdalejr
I as a student who doesn&#x27;t quite have a job, rely on free services like GitHub pages to host my projects. One of the problems I have with this approach is finding reliable hosts that are free of cost. I have been looking around for any free services that allow hosting a back-end a few I&#x27;ve seen are https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pythonanywhere.com Most others I find only offer PHP hosting do any of you own some good back-end hosting services that are somewhat usable and don&#x27;t run on outdated versions of a language?
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fourmii
Not sure what exactly on the back-end you're after. But why not use the free
tier on Google Cloud, AWS or Azure? I've been using GCP for a few months for
free (you get $300 credit when you first sign up):

[https://cloud.google.com/free/](https://cloud.google.com/free/)

That way, you can just build or use whatever back-end services you need.

~~~
busymichael
Just to back this up -- I launched
[https://dndemail.com](https://dndemail.com) on Google Cloud earlier this
year. I have 250 users and still haven't used the full $300 credit. It was a
great way to prototype, test, and launch.

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karmakaze
Here's a pretty comprehensive, categorized list:

[https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev](https://github.com/ripienaar/free-
for-dev)

~~~
ateesdalejr
Thanks! :D This is really great. The perfect comprehensive list of free stuff
to use.

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GFischer
Maybe you qualify for Microsoft's Dreamspark or you can sign up for the
Microsoft Imagine cup and get some free credits.

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-
offers/imag...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-
offers/imagine/)

[https://imagine.microsoft.com/en-
us/custom/Dreamspark](https://imagine.microsoft.com/en-us/custom/Dreamspark)

That comes with some Azure credits you can use for .NET or Node or PHP apps :)
and backends such as MsSQL or CosmosDB (Microsoft's MongoDB) . I don't know
how long it lasts though (1 year at the very least).

I have a Microsoft BizSpark account and it's great.

~~~
ateesdalejr
Ah, I hadn't seen this before. I'll give it a try.

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Can_Not
Zeit now is great for static sites or nodejs. You would be on your own for
anything stateful. Some options for stateful add-ons (from other companies)
include vultr's $2.50/month VPS if you need postgre or redis, firebase has a
free tier, digital ocean's S3 alternative is cheaper than AWS's.

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forkLding
Firebase is definitely good to use, essentially free if its not a huge-ass
application that is massively scaling up.

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Tepix
Hang out on lowendtalk and grab something like a $8/year VPS special offer and
run your stuff there. Administrating it will also be a good learning
experience.

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Mizza
Use Zappa + NoDB!
[https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa](https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa)

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ecesena
I run most of my side projects on a combination of app engine, firebase, and
some times even just google spreadsheet.

To me Gcloud is also a pretty good bet because they have a very good startup
plan ($100k in credits) in case you want to bring any of your projects to the
next level.

(this is not to say that others have bad services, this is just my personal
pref for my own things)

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tedmiston
Heroku or Firebase

Or just spend $5/mo on DigitalOcean.

~~~
amorphid
+1 vote for Heroku.

Re: spending a little money, Scaleway has some the cheapest servers I've seen
& would consider using. 2.99 Euros (3.54 USD as of now) for a server w/ 2GB of
RAM & 50GB of storage is a pretty solid deal (if it works well, and I haven't
heavily used it). Pricing info at
[https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/](https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/).

[1] [https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/](https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/)
2.99 Euro equals 3.54 US Dollar

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255kb
Check my repo [https://github.com/255kb/stack-on-a-
budget](https://github.com/255kb/stack-on-a-budget) it gathers a list of
services with freetiers for backend, emailing, etc

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segmondy
Vultr has an instance for $2.50 a month. If that's too much money for you.
Host one on your personal computer at home/in the dorm and use Dynamic DNS.

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bigmanwalter
I'm a huge fan of PythonAnywhere. I use it for all my own projects as well as
for anything I'm building for clients :)

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dhruvkar
Netlify.com

Just static sites, so brush up on that Javascript.

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Blackstone4
Graph.cool

~~~
Can_Not
Just wanted to share some information that I think a lot of people will want
to know before diving in:

> Every Graphcool service comes with an AWS Aurora instance that is backing
> the GraphQL server.
> [https://github.com/graphcool/framework/blob/master/docs/02-C...](https://github.com/graphcool/framework/blob/master/docs/02-Concepts/02-Database-%26-API/02-Database-%26-Data-
> Modelling.md)

> Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL compatible relational database built
> for the cloud
> [https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora)

The free tier currently provides 100MB of database.

~~~
bananamansion
comparitively, is that bad or good

~~~
Can_Not
I've surfed for some free DBs in the past. Most free hosts don't allow remote
connections. Some services I've seen 50MB and 20MB but were uselessly slow. If
you're not paying, I suspect this is actually good.

