6 ms·

Show HN: Webapp.io - Free firecracker-based full-stack hosting

120 points by colinchartier 4y ago

colinchartier 4y ago
Hey HN, We recently finished our firecracker-based webapp hosting platform. It's like if Vercel and Docker had a baby: You write VM configurations in a language that looks like a Dockerfile, and every commit creates a preview environment which can be "promoted" to a production site. Here's an example configuration: ``` FROM vm/ubuntu:18.04 RUN curl -fSsL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash RUN apt-get install nodejs COPY . . RUN npm install RUN npm run build RUN BACKGROUND npm run start EXPOSE WEBSITE localhost:3000 ``` This product combines our firecracker-based hypervisor (200ms cold starts) with a global CDN written in Go (using Caddy for TLS termination) We can offer everything for free because we charge for the DevOps side (CI/CD & preview environments) - we have no intention of getting users and then upselling people for hosting. We're obviously very excited about this launch, and would love to hear your feedback.
- sosodev 4y ago
  What are the limitations of the free hosting? Surely I can’t deploy once and scale infinitely without paying you, right?
  - colinchartier 4y ago
    It's two environments per unique account - though you can email support to prove you're a real person and get this moved up. We haven't had to formalize any policies, but they'll be similar to other cloud free tiers: - HTTP only (no terabytes of videos or images exclusively) - No crypto mining - No phishing sites - No sending emails, attacking others, etc We currently do about a million builds a year, so 99% of projects shouldn't cause problems for us.
- re-thc 4y ago
  Vercel aka Zeit originally hosted Docker containers.
  - colinchartier 4y ago
    We don't actually host docker containers - the configuration DSL is based on Docker, but has crucial differences In particular, you can do things like RUN BACKGROUND docker-compose up EXPOSE WEBSITE 8080 This is super important for most use-cases, since otherwise you have to deal with networking and version control.
- nextaccountic 4y ago
  > You write VM configurations in a language that looks like a Dockerfile What are the differences from a Dockerfile?
- benatkin 4y ago
  Serverless isn't that enjoyable for me since I don't like using old versions of stuff. Vercel doesn't support Node 19, which means you can't use built-in fetch without it logging a warning about fetch being experimental every time you call it. IIRC it took a long time for Node 18 to be available. Containers FTW. You can use things in production when the maintainers release to production, not when AWS Lambda has them.
  - saurik 4y ago
    > You can use things in production when the maintainers release to production, not when AWS Lambda has them. You can run anything the hell you want in AWS Lambda as it is literally just a container. The documentation even shows you how to write your lambda function entirely in a handful of lines of bash using curl to request the job and submit the result.
lyeniac 4y ago
Hey HN! Co-founder of webapp.io here. Looking forward to your feedback :)
sosodev 4y ago
Why would I use this over fly.io? It seems to be very similar at first glance
- Existenceblinks 4y ago
  I can't even find their vm details (cpu/memory + bandwidth) and many other things.
  - colinchartier 4y ago
    Will add those to the landing page - they got lost in the Figma design
- mayli 4y ago
  Same question here, it seems to be a fly.io clone without the global anycast network.
  - colinchartier 4y ago
    We do have a caching anycast proxy like fly, render, and other webapp-focused PaaS providers.
    - dmw_ng 4y ago
      I'd like to try out your service, but would not be willing to link my GitHub account, and I do not have a Google account. Any chance of a non-federated sign in method?
      - Tostino 4y ago
        What access does it require to your GitHub that you are weary about? (Actual question, I am not involved with Webapp.io at all)
- colinchartier 4y ago
  Practically - We don't actually require you to use Docker, and we don't use it under the hood. The configuration (which looks like a Dockerfile) can run multiple containers in the same VM: FROM vm/ubuntu:22.04 RUN (install docker) RUN REPEATABLE docker-compose build RUN BACKGROUND docker-compose up EXPOSE WEBSITE localhost:8080 You can also just run entirely non-docker services: RUN BACKGROUND redis-server - The DSL will watch which files are used for each build step to skip everything you haven't changed, so builds are much faster - You can use us to clone VMs and run Cypress tests in parallel, then promote one of the clones to a preview environment, and another to a production environment - We're more declarative (in my opinion), we don't have a CLI. Everything is done by editing a Layerfile and git pushing it TL;DR, we focused on a declarative configuration format to quickly build, fork, and hibernate VMs, where Fly is more focused on building/shipping docker containers (though the products do fill a similar niche)
radiojasper 4y ago
Your Docs [0] and Examples[1] page, or many [2] other page in the footer for that matter, return a blank page? [0] https://webapp.io/docs/main https://webapp.io/docs/main [1] https://webapp.io/docs/examples https://webapp.io/docs/examples [2] https://webapp.io/docs/integrations https://webapp.io/docs/integrations Firefox, latest version, no ad blocker enabled. After nosing around in your source a bit, it seems the redirect to https://docs.webapp.io https://docs.webapp.io doesn't work for me?
- colinchartier 4y ago
  We actually just migrated to NextJS this week - so there's still a few hairy bits with the frontend. Thanks for the report, should be fixed now.
  - radiojasper 4y ago
    Thanks, can confirm: works fine now!
d3nj4l 4y ago
You're really going to run into trouble with the "no credit card required" thing - people are going to use your service to, at worst, spam and abuse other people and, at best, mine crypto.
- colinchartier 4y ago
  Webapp.io's money making part (which facilitates this) is a DevOps company (CI/CD, preview environments, etc) which is already hammered with that sort of thing - see this post (from when we were called LayerCI) discussed by TravisCI for context: https://blog.travis-ci.com/2021-10-20-mining https://blog.travis-ci.com/2021-10-20-mining
  - resonious 4y ago
    But this article says the solution was to require credit card for free use. The parent comment is noting that these guys are not doing that.
    - Kiro 4y ago
      "These guys" are the same guys.
      - Tostino 4y ago
        So I think the question is: "what changed from your prior analysis?"
        sangnoir 4y ago
        [I am not parent poster] A new product launched. Abuse can be ignored in initial stages (indeed, it can be useful as a stress test and for boosting user numbers). Crypto miners and spammers become a problem when they are crowding out legit customers, at which point they'll be pruned, and new signups will require credit cards.
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
Looks great! Will deploy my next project on here and see how good it is :)
nickphx 4y ago
I signed up and tried to authorize a single github repo, I received a '500 error' from https://webapp.io/api/after_github_oauth?code=&installation_id=&setup_action=install&state= https://webapp.io/api/after_github_oauth?code=&installation_...
- colinchartier 4y ago
  It looks like all of the auth data is empty - maybe you logged into an account which doesn't have permission to install on that repository? If you email me at colin@webapp.io with your GitHub account name, webapp.io account (if any), and the name of the repository, I can take a look for you.
  - nickphx 4y ago
    Ah, I stripped it from the post, didn't want to leave some important tokens on the internets.. :D I removed the authorization and tried again a few minutes later, it ended up working. Probably a temporary problem.
solatic 4y ago
What's the strategy for dealing with persistent data? (Postgres, KV store, whatever)? How do I set that up and connect to it? If you're running in AWS (looks like it), how do I set up private networking with RDS?
- isuckatcoding 4y ago
  Ty for asking this. I was searching the docs all over for this and surprised it wasn’t mentioned.
- fulafel 4y ago
  It's advertised as a VM so it should have a persistent filesystem. So sounds like you can run your own DB service in the same VM or use SQLite. Eg in this Django app example they are using PostgreSQL: https://docs.webapp.io/examples/django https://docs.webapp.io/examples/django
langsoul-com 4y ago
Fly.io has no credit card free hosting for a bit, then immediately stopped due to insane bot abuse. Might wanna check their article, because you may face the same problems.
nextaccountic 4y ago
When creating an account with Github, why do you ask permission to "act on my behalf"? There is no such permission when creating an account with Google
mleonhard 4y ago
We need our server to run very close to our database, preferably in the same datacenter. Does webapp.io support that yet?
ushakov 4y ago
Any chance you will open-source this?
hobo_mark 4y ago
This application will be able to: - Access the authenticated user's API Grants complete read/write access to the API, including all groups and projects, the container registry, and the package registry Why is write access necessary?
nephanth 4y ago
Where does the money come from?

120 points by colinchartier 4y ago

Hey HN, We recently finished our firecracker-based webapp hosting platform. It's like if Vercel and Docker had a baby: You write VM configurations in a language that looks like a Dockerfile, and every commit creates a preview environment which can be "promoted" to a production site. Here's an example configuration: ``` FROM vm/ubuntu:18.04 RUN curl -fSsL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash RUN apt-get install nodejs COPY . . RUN npm install RUN npm run build RUN BACKGROUND npm run start EXPOSE WEBSITE localhost:3000 ``` This product combines our firecracker-based hypervisor (200ms cold starts) with a global CDN written in Go (using Caddy for TLS termination) We can offer everything for free because we charge for the DevOps side (CI/CD & preview environments) - we have no intention of getting users and then upselling people for hosting. We're obviously very excited about this launch, and would love to hear your feedback.

sosodev 4y ago
What are the limitations of the free hosting? Surely I can’t deploy once and scale infinitely without paying you, right?
- colinchartier 4y ago
  It's two environments per unique account - though you can email support to prove you're a real person and get this moved up. We haven't had to formalize any policies, but they'll be similar to other cloud free tiers: - HTTP only (no terabytes of videos or images exclusively) - No crypto mining - No phishing sites - No sending emails, attacking others, etc We currently do about a million builds a year, so 99% of projects shouldn't cause problems for us.
re-thc 4y ago
Vercel aka Zeit originally hosted Docker containers.
- colinchartier 4y ago
  We don't actually host docker containers - the configuration DSL is based on Docker, but has crucial differences In particular, you can do things like RUN BACKGROUND docker-compose up EXPOSE WEBSITE 8080 This is super important for most use-cases, since otherwise you have to deal with networking and version control.
nextaccountic 4y ago
> You write VM configurations in a language that looks like a Dockerfile What are the differences from a Dockerfile?
benatkin 4y ago
Serverless isn't that enjoyable for me since I don't like using old versions of stuff. Vercel doesn't support Node 19, which means you can't use built-in fetch without it logging a warning about fetch being experimental every time you call it. IIRC it took a long time for Node 18 to be available. Containers FTW. You can use things in production when the maintainers release to production, not when AWS Lambda has them.
- saurik 4y ago
  > You can use things in production when the maintainers release to production, not when AWS Lambda has them. You can run anything the hell you want in AWS Lambda as it is literally just a container. The documentation even shows you how to write your lambda function entirely in a handful of lines of bash using curl to request the job and submit the result.

lyeniac 4y ago

Hey HN! Co-founder of webapp.io here. Looking forward to your feedback :)

sosodev 4y ago

Why would I use this over fly.io? It seems to be very similar at first glance

Existenceblinks 4y ago
I can't even find their vm details (cpu/memory + bandwidth) and many other things.
- colinchartier 4y ago
  Will add those to the landing page - they got lost in the Figma design
mayli 4y ago
Same question here, it seems to be a fly.io clone without the global anycast network.
- colinchartier 4y ago
  We do have a caching anycast proxy like fly, render, and other webapp-focused PaaS providers.
  - dmw_ng 4y ago
    I'd like to try out your service, but would not be willing to link my GitHub account, and I do not have a Google account. Any chance of a non-federated sign in method?
    - Tostino 4y ago
      What access does it require to your GitHub that you are weary about? (Actual question, I am not involved with Webapp.io at all)
colinchartier 4y ago
Practically - We don't actually require you to use Docker, and we don't use it under the hood. The configuration (which looks like a Dockerfile) can run multiple containers in the same VM: FROM vm/ubuntu:22.04 RUN (install docker) RUN REPEATABLE docker-compose build RUN BACKGROUND docker-compose up EXPOSE WEBSITE localhost:8080 You can also just run entirely non-docker services: RUN BACKGROUND redis-server - The DSL will watch which files are used for each build step to skip everything you haven't changed, so builds are much faster - You can use us to clone VMs and run Cypress tests in parallel, then promote one of the clones to a preview environment, and another to a production environment - We're more declarative (in my opinion), we don't have a CLI. Everything is done by editing a Layerfile and git pushing it TL;DR, we focused on a declarative configuration format to quickly build, fork, and hibernate VMs, where Fly is more focused on building/shipping docker containers (though the products do fill a similar niche)

radiojasper 4y ago

Your Docs [0] and Examples[1] page, or many [2] other page in the footer for that matter, return a blank page? [0] https://webapp.io/docs/main https://webapp.io/docs/main [1] https://webapp.io/docs/examples https://webapp.io/docs/examples [2] https://webapp.io/docs/integrations https://webapp.io/docs/integrations Firefox, latest version, no ad blocker enabled. After nosing around in your source a bit, it seems the redirect to https://docs.webapp.io https://docs.webapp.io doesn't work for me?

colinchartier 4y ago
We actually just migrated to NextJS this week - so there's still a few hairy bits with the frontend. Thanks for the report, should be fixed now.
- radiojasper 4y ago
  Thanks, can confirm: works fine now!

d3nj4l 4y ago

You're really going to run into trouble with the "no credit card required" thing - people are going to use your service to, at worst, spam and abuse other people and, at best, mine crypto.

colinchartier 4y ago
Webapp.io's money making part (which facilitates this) is a DevOps company (CI/CD, preview environments, etc) which is already hammered with that sort of thing - see this post (from when we were called LayerCI) discussed by TravisCI for context: https://blog.travis-ci.com/2021-10-20-mining https://blog.travis-ci.com/2021-10-20-mining
- resonious 4y ago
  But this article says the solution was to require credit card for free use. The parent comment is noting that these guys are not doing that.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    "These guys" are the same guys.
    - Tostino 4y ago
      So I think the question is: "what changed from your prior analysis?"
      - sangnoir 4y ago
        [I am not parent poster] A new product launched. Abuse can be ignored in initial stages (indeed, it can be useful as a stress test and for boosting user numbers). Crypto miners and spammers become a problem when they are crowding out legit customers, at which point they'll be pruned, and new signups will require credit cards.

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

Looks great! Will deploy my next project on here and see how good it is :)

nickphx 4y ago

I signed up and tried to authorize a single github repo, I received a '500 error' from https://webapp.io/api/after_github_oauth?code=&installation_id=&setup_action=install&state= https://webapp.io/api/after_github_oauth?code=&installation_...

colinchartier 4y ago
It looks like all of the auth data is empty - maybe you logged into an account which doesn't have permission to install on that repository? If you email me at colin@webapp.io with your GitHub account name, webapp.io account (if any), and the name of the repository, I can take a look for you.
- nickphx 4y ago
  Ah, I stripped it from the post, didn't want to leave some important tokens on the internets.. :D I removed the authorization and tried again a few minutes later, it ended up working. Probably a temporary problem.

solatic 4y ago

What's the strategy for dealing with persistent data? (Postgres, KV store, whatever)? How do I set that up and connect to it? If you're running in AWS (looks like it), how do I set up private networking with RDS?

isuckatcoding 4y ago
Ty for asking this. I was searching the docs all over for this and surprised it wasn’t mentioned.
fulafel 4y ago
It's advertised as a VM so it should have a persistent filesystem. So sounds like you can run your own DB service in the same VM or use SQLite. Eg in this Django app example they are using PostgreSQL: https://docs.webapp.io/examples/django https://docs.webapp.io/examples/django

langsoul-com 4y ago

Fly.io has no credit card free hosting for a bit, then immediately stopped due to insane bot abuse. Might wanna check their article, because you may face the same problems.

nextaccountic 4y ago

When creating an account with Github, why do you ask permission to "act on my behalf"? There is no such permission when creating an account with Google

mleonhard 4y ago

We need our server to run very close to our database, preferably in the same datacenter. Does webapp.io support that yet?

ushakov 4y ago

Any chance you will open-source this?

hobo_mark 4y ago

This application will be able to: - Access the authenticated user's API Grants complete read/write access to the API, including all groups and projects, the container registry, and the package registry Why is write access necessary?

nephanth 4y ago

Where does the money come from?