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While my instinctive reaction to Heroku's shift was "ugh, that sucks, how dare they," I have to say I get it. It is hard to build a successful business with th

While my instinctive reaction to Heroku's shift was "ugh, that sucks, how dare they," I have to say I get it. It is hard to build a successful business with that model given their offering. However to the comment about "git push heroku master," someone that is an "early" programmer like myself finds that level of simplification helpful when I'm focusing on things like learning all the other things that could go wrong with my Rails Tutorial app. That said, as I now am at the point of starting to work on projects that I hope to one day be public facing, I'm wondering if there are any recommendations for "Heroku-like" providers with a free tier that stays up 24/7 for super simple Rails and Sinatra apps, perhaps with a DB.

mmanfrin 11y ago
AWS. Elastic Beanstalk has pretty similar easy command line tools, and their free tier gives enough for one instance each of ec2, s3, rds and will mostly autoconfigure like heroku does.
- shostack 11y ago
  Since I'm not at all confident in my abilities to secure things properly yet, am I at any risk of racking up a massive bill from a hacked account if I go with the AWS free tier? Or is that simply not a possibility?
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Enable two factor auth on your AWS account. Chances of fraud quickly approach zero unless your AWS API creds are leaked. You should always be using an IAM account that has only the privileges your application requires.
  - smt88 11y ago
    It's possible. Security on AWS can certainly be tricky. It's safer to use ElasticBeanstalk if you don't feel confident in your security knowledge, since it manages keys and IAM roles for you.
- glogla 11y ago
  Free tier is only for 12 months, and then it gets very expensive - t2 micro instance is 10 USD a month, so that's 20 USD a month with one ec2 and one rds instance.
eatitraw 11y ago
> I'm wondering if there are any recommendations for "Heroku-like" providers with a free tier that stays up 24/7 for super simple Rails and Sinatra apps, perhaps with a DB. OpenShift(https://www.openshift.com/ https://www.openshift.com/) may be the service you're looking for. I haven't tried it, but it looks nice.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Out of the box OpenShift has a variety of languages and frameworks as well as ProstgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB database options (plus custom cartridges). You get three free gears (i.e. containers) so up to 3 small apps. I've only used it to create a small Python/Flask app http://wwos-bitmason.rhcloud.com/ http://wwos-bitmason.rhcloud.com/ but there are lots of examples and information on the OpenShift blog. [Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat.]
- carise 11y ago
  I've used OpenShift and it's pretty straightforward to use. I don't feel like it's as easy to use as Heroku, but it got the job done. If I left my app idle (I think for 24 hrs or more), I noticed that it took awhile for it to awake when I tried to access it again.
  - shostack 11y ago
    So is it not in fact up for 24hrs if it has to wake up when you try to access it again?
    - iza 11y ago
      According to https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing/plan-comparison https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing/plan-comparison the free plan idles after 24 hours of inactivity (https://developers.openshift.com/en/managing-idling.html https://developers.openshift.com/en/managing-idling.html) However you can work around it by hitting your server with an http request every 24 hours, or upgrade to the Bronze Plan which apparently has $0 base price anyway so I'm not sure what the downside is.
seiji 11y ago
This was making the rounds a while ago as half DIY half managed: http://convox.com http://convox.com
- phunge 11y ago
  +1 Convox is worth looking at. Fully open source, feature-rich and leverages AWS&Docker instead of reinventing the wheel.
  - smt88 11y ago
    Docker originally came from DotCloud, which was basically the same concept/underlying services as this. It was amazing. I never understood why someone would want to use Heroku instead. I haven't used it since they sold that business, but I'm excited to use Convox.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tfe 11y ago
> I'm wondering if there are any recommendations for "Heroku-like" providers with a free tier that stays up 24/7 for super simple Rails and Sinatra apps, perhaps with a DB. Unless you've got a whole lot of them, paying $7 to Heroku is probably still your best bet. Especially if you're already familiar with the ecosystem.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
INM Bluemix has a very generous free tier. You can run two or three low memory Sinatra apps for free. It is a cool system. I also line AWS and Microsoft Azure, depending on what I am doing.

mmanfrin 11y ago

AWS. Elastic Beanstalk has pretty similar easy command line tools, and their free tier gives enough for one instance each of ec2, s3, rds and will mostly autoconfigure like heroku does.

shostack 11y ago
Since I'm not at all confident in my abilities to secure things properly yet, am I at any risk of racking up a massive bill from a hacked account if I go with the AWS free tier? Or is that simply not a possibility?
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Enable two factor auth on your AWS account. Chances of fraud quickly approach zero unless your AWS API creds are leaked. You should always be using an IAM account that has only the privileges your application requires.
- smt88 11y ago
  It's possible. Security on AWS can certainly be tricky. It's safer to use ElasticBeanstalk if you don't feel confident in your security knowledge, since it manages keys and IAM roles for you.
glogla 11y ago
Free tier is only for 12 months, and then it gets very expensive - t2 micro instance is 10 USD a month, so that's 20 USD a month with one ec2 and one rds instance.

eatitraw 11y ago

> I'm wondering if there are any recommendations for "Heroku-like" providers with a free tier that stays up 24/7 for super simple Rails and Sinatra apps, perhaps with a DB. OpenShift(https://www.openshift.com/ https://www.openshift.com/) may be the service you're looking for. I haven't tried it, but it looks nice.

ghaff 11y ago
Out of the box OpenShift has a variety of languages and frameworks as well as ProstgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB database options (plus custom cartridges). You get three free gears (i.e. containers) so up to 3 small apps. I've only used it to create a small Python/Flask app http://wwos-bitmason.rhcloud.com/ http://wwos-bitmason.rhcloud.com/ but there are lots of examples and information on the OpenShift blog. [Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat.]
carise 11y ago
I've used OpenShift and it's pretty straightforward to use. I don't feel like it's as easy to use as Heroku, but it got the job done. If I left my app idle (I think for 24 hrs or more), I noticed that it took awhile for it to awake when I tried to access it again.
- shostack 11y ago
  So is it not in fact up for 24hrs if it has to wake up when you try to access it again?
  - iza 11y ago
    According to https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing/plan-comparison https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing/plan-comparison the free plan idles after 24 hours of inactivity (https://developers.openshift.com/en/managing-idling.html https://developers.openshift.com/en/managing-idling.html) However you can work around it by hitting your server with an http request every 24 hours, or upgrade to the Bronze Plan which apparently has $0 base price anyway so I'm not sure what the downside is.

seiji 11y ago

This was making the rounds a while ago as half DIY half managed: http://convox.com http://convox.com

phunge 11y ago
+1 Convox is worth looking at. Fully open source, feature-rich and leverages AWS&Docker instead of reinventing the wheel.
- smt88 11y ago
  Docker originally came from DotCloud, which was basically the same concept/underlying services as this. It was amazing. I never understood why someone would want to use Heroku instead. I haven't used it since they sold that business, but I'm excited to use Convox.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tfe 11y ago

> I'm wondering if there are any recommendations for "Heroku-like" providers with a free tier that stays up 24/7 for super simple Rails and Sinatra apps, perhaps with a DB. Unless you've got a whole lot of them, paying $7 to Heroku is probably still your best bet. Especially if you're already familiar with the ecosystem.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

INM Bluemix has a very generous free tier. You can run two or three low memory Sinatra apps for free. It is a cool system. I also line AWS and Microsoft Azure, depending on what I am doing.