4 ms·

I've seen a few of these "we run docker compose for every PR" solutions - did extensive research for our own company before building it internally using a slack

I've seen a few of these "we run docker compose for every PR" solutions - did extensive research for our own company before building it internally using a slack bot. Could you discuss how you are different than other (often free) offerings? - https://www.releaseapp.io/ https://www.releaseapp.io/ - https://getdockup.com/ https://getdockup.com/ - https://vercel.com/ https://vercel.com/ - https://render.com/ https://render.com/ - https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/github-integration-review-apps https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/github-integration-rev... - https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/ - rolling your own using AWS SDK + spot instances + slack chatbot (our solution)

podoman 6y ago
Hi there, for sure! I'll put these companies in buckets: https://render.com/ https://render.com/ These folks are a production solution and have added support for review apps. All that happens is a new deploy of the production app on every PR. There's no support for spinning up arbitrary commits, caching, etc.. Further, its not free. https://vercel.com/ https://vercel.com/, https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/ Only supports frontend (and maybe serverless?) https://www.releaseapp.io/ https://www.releaseapp.io/, https://getdockup.com/ https://getdockup.com/ These are both more direct competitors. Dockup is no longer around I believe. Wrt/ release we have different outlooks on pricing, as they charge a large initial fee. The product itself is similar, however. And lastly, Heroku was discussed in threads below, but the general idea is that if you're already on Heroku, using review apps makes a lot of sense! With that being said, they don't support the features I mentioned above such as, restarting runs, comparing commits, caching, etc.. Let me know your thoughts, happy to keep the conversation going!
- anurag 6y ago
  (Render founder) * Render PR previews have built-in caching. * Many of our customers use Preview Environments (currently in early access). For every PR, Render automatically spins up a complete testing environment including static sites, servers and databases that can be seeded with a hook. It's similar to Heroku's Review Apps, but a fraction of the cost. * Render's Preview Environments are free for static sites and prorated by the second for servers and databases. Regarding pricing: we charge for actual usage (vs. a per-seat model) because previews (and consequently our own costs) rarely scale linearly with developer count. More generally, it's great to see more activity in the space because it's a validation of our own product strategy, and there is obviously room for multiple players.
  - podoman 6y ago
    Sorry if my assumptions were incorrect in the above post; and likewise, big fans of Render's offerings :) .
    - anurag 6y ago
      No worries and thanks! Reploy looks great. It's especially useful for teams on AWS/GCP who want to run this in their own VPC. Per-seat pricing makes a lot of sense for that model.
      - podoman 6y ago
        Thanks @anurag, we should get connected at some point, just shot you a message :) .
tommy_mcclung 6y ago
Thanks for the https://releaseapp.io https://releaseapp.io shout out! Reploy looks like a copy of what we are doing. Game on.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but trying to make a point that a new product "copied what [you] are doing" just seems inappropriate. Is there perhaps a better way that this could have been phrased? Both products operate in the same space, and are attempting to solve similar problems, but as far as I can recall Release attempts to manage all environments from dev -> production, while Reploy is specifically targeting the developer experience around managing and sharing staging environments. The concept of dynamic staging environments is not new; I've personally built in-house solutions to solve this problem years ago, well before Release went through YC. It's not really fair to say that anyone who comes out with a similar product is "copying Release".
  - tommy_mcclung 6y ago
    Yeah, maybe I should have said, Reploy is going after the same problem in a similar way? I wasn’t trying to imply they copied what we are doing but the approach to solving the problem is very similar.
    - podoman 6y ago
      Agreed! Woot!
      - Terretta 6y ago
        They said “game on”, you said “we own other team“ ... off to the races!
  - erik_landerholm 6y ago
    I’m a co-founder of Release. We can create/manage all envs from static builds with a single backend to production of very complicated apps. But, we started with the idea of Review apps for more complicated apps than heroku can do. There are many companies trying to solve this problem in various ways, or smaller parts of it, which is good, validated the space.
Rodeoclash 6y ago
Feel free to add an open source version this I created: https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand

podoman 6y ago

Hi there, for sure! I'll put these companies in buckets: https://render.com/ https://render.com/ These folks are a production solution and have added support for review apps. All that happens is a new deploy of the production app on every PR. There's no support for spinning up arbitrary commits, caching, etc.. Further, its not free. https://vercel.com/ https://vercel.com/, https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/ Only supports frontend (and maybe serverless?) https://www.releaseapp.io/ https://www.releaseapp.io/, https://getdockup.com/ https://getdockup.com/ These are both more direct competitors. Dockup is no longer around I believe. Wrt/ release we have different outlooks on pricing, as they charge a large initial fee. The product itself is similar, however. And lastly, Heroku was discussed in threads below, but the general idea is that if you're already on Heroku, using review apps makes a lot of sense! With that being said, they don't support the features I mentioned above such as, restarting runs, comparing commits, caching, etc.. Let me know your thoughts, happy to keep the conversation going!

anurag 6y ago
(Render founder) * Render PR previews have built-in caching. * Many of our customers use Preview Environments (currently in early access). For every PR, Render automatically spins up a complete testing environment including static sites, servers and databases that can be seeded with a hook. It's similar to Heroku's Review Apps, but a fraction of the cost. * Render's Preview Environments are free for static sites and prorated by the second for servers and databases. Regarding pricing: we charge for actual usage (vs. a per-seat model) because previews (and consequently our own costs) rarely scale linearly with developer count. More generally, it's great to see more activity in the space because it's a validation of our own product strategy, and there is obviously room for multiple players.
- podoman 6y ago
  Sorry if my assumptions were incorrect in the above post; and likewise, big fans of Render's offerings :) .
  - anurag 6y ago
    No worries and thanks! Reploy looks great. It's especially useful for teams on AWS/GCP who want to run this in their own VPC. Per-seat pricing makes a lot of sense for that model.
    - podoman 6y ago
      Thanks @anurag, we should get connected at some point, just shot you a message :) .

tommy_mcclung 6y ago

Thanks for the https://releaseapp.io https://releaseapp.io shout out! Reploy looks like a copy of what we are doing. Game on.

nrmitchi 6y ago
I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but trying to make a point that a new product "copied what [you] are doing" just seems inappropriate. Is there perhaps a better way that this could have been phrased? Both products operate in the same space, and are attempting to solve similar problems, but as far as I can recall Release attempts to manage all environments from dev -> production, while Reploy is specifically targeting the developer experience around managing and sharing staging environments. The concept of dynamic staging environments is not new; I've personally built in-house solutions to solve this problem years ago, well before Release went through YC. It's not really fair to say that anyone who comes out with a similar product is "copying Release".
- tommy_mcclung 6y ago
  Yeah, maybe I should have said, Reploy is going after the same problem in a similar way? I wasn’t trying to imply they copied what we are doing but the approach to solving the problem is very similar.
  - podoman 6y ago
    Agreed! Woot!
    - Terretta 6y ago
      They said “game on”, you said “we own other team“ ... off to the races!
- erik_landerholm 6y ago
  I’m a co-founder of Release. We can create/manage all envs from static builds with a single backend to production of very complicated apps. But, we started with the idea of Review apps for more complicated apps than heroku can do. There are many companies trying to solve this problem in various ways, or smaller parts of it, which is good, validated the space.

Rodeoclash 6y ago

Feel free to add an open source version this I created: https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand