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Ditto. People drastically underestimate the effort required to make a PaaS platform and drastically overestimate people's willingness to pay. It's a dogfight o

Ditto. People drastically underestimate the effort required to make a PaaS platform and drastically overestimate people's willingness to pay. It's a dogfight of a market with brutal economics.

andrewgodwin 14y ago
Not to mention the fact that you have to have a really wide range of knowledge to cover that full stack of management and security - from raw networking to database management and everything in between. We're fortunate that our skillset just about covered it, but throw in support for all the popular web languages and it's unlikely you'll pull it off without 3 or 4 people, minimum.
_delirium 14y ago
I think part of "drastically overestimate people's willingness to pay" is that the customers also "drastically underestimate the effort required", so they tend to compare PaaS pricing against what it'd cost to roll-their-own on a VPS or on EC2, which really puts a squeeze on pricing.
- jtauber 14y ago
  yep, number one thing I hear is "why wouldn't I just use my own VPS?"
  - webjprgm 14y ago
    I didn't really understand how hard it is to run a VPS until I started doing it. It seems so easy when you look at it. Also, I run my own web stack on my dev machine anyway. I went VPS because: 1. I'm more familiar with configuring my own web apps then trying to use someone else's admin console. (Low opinion of said consoles that I've seen in the past, but haven't tried Heroku or other new services.) 2. I need to run Node.js, PHP, and Ruby all on the same server. (Actually, just PHP and Node.js, which are in the same web app and so need access to a shared database. Ruby could be elsewhere at the moment.) I'm still on VPS because: 1. Already paying for it, hasn't been a year yet 2. I still don't understand the new PaaS thing 3. PHP + Node.js PaaS host? Preferably with name recognition on par with Heroku, but at least lots of good reviews. Complications of VPS are numerous, so I won't enumerate them. Lots of things to configure, update, and keep alive. Also it isn't the same OS as my dev machine plus I have to manage security for a public server but not for my desktop machine. EDIT: just thought of one more reason I use VPS, I actually like ssh shell access. Ability to edit files and run arbitrary commands, many innumerable uses of this.
    - calloc 14y ago
      https://www.dotcloud.com/ https://www.dotcloud.com/ does all three (Node, PHP and Ruby) along with many others. You can set up different instances, have them access the same database as well. When I was in their beta program when they first started out they also gave you shell access to the machine so you could see what was being deployed, and run arbitrary commands (perfect for having an Python app that required running paste for upgrading the DB to the latest version). In my experience with them I had absolutely no issues, it was fast to configure and set up and their command line tools were fantastic. It used git if you wanted it to, or could use any arbitrary directory and upload the contents. Not only that but you could modify the nginx config file to change redirects and set static directories that shouldn't be handled by WSGI so that you could take a load off the Python app from serving up requests for static content. I haven't used dotCloud in over 8+ months now, if not longer, their pricing just didn't make sense for me, and I found it cheaper with all the sites I host to just go with a single dedicated server rather than use their services so maybe a lot has changed, but they sound like what you need.
    - codesuela 14y ago
      dotCloud (not affiliated) might fit your needs. You can run various mixed stacks on one platform and as far as I remember from testing it they leave you more freedom than e.g. Heroku. Only drawback is the pricing which in your case would be at least 99 USD pm.
- salsakran 14y ago
  To be fair, customers should be comparing PaaS pricing to their own fully loaded cost to roll-their-own. If a PaaS can't beat the internal price (including time, hiring ops people,etc), they're fighting a losing battle.
  - stickfigure 14y ago
    Sure, as long as the internal price doesn't "drastically underestimate the effort required". Which it rarely fails to do. Even worse, most internal measurements drastically underestimate the competence required.

Ditto. People drastically underestimate the effort required to make a PaaS platform and drastically overestimate people's willingness to pay. It's a dogfight of a market with brutal economics.

andrewgodwin 14y ago

Not to mention the fact that you have to have a really wide range of knowledge to cover that full stack of management and security - from raw networking to database management and everything in between. We're fortunate that our skillset just about covered it, but throw in support for all the popular web languages and it's unlikely you'll pull it off without 3 or 4 people, minimum.

_delirium 14y ago

I think part of "drastically overestimate people's willingness to pay" is that the customers also "drastically underestimate the effort required", so they tend to compare PaaS pricing against what it'd cost to roll-their-own on a VPS or on EC2, which really puts a squeeze on pricing.

jtauber 14y ago
yep, number one thing I hear is "why wouldn't I just use my own VPS?"
- webjprgm 14y ago
  I didn't really understand how hard it is to run a VPS until I started doing it. It seems so easy when you look at it. Also, I run my own web stack on my dev machine anyway. I went VPS because: 1. I'm more familiar with configuring my own web apps then trying to use someone else's admin console. (Low opinion of said consoles that I've seen in the past, but haven't tried Heroku or other new services.) 2. I need to run Node.js, PHP, and Ruby all on the same server. (Actually, just PHP and Node.js, which are in the same web app and so need access to a shared database. Ruby could be elsewhere at the moment.) I'm still on VPS because: 1. Already paying for it, hasn't been a year yet 2. I still don't understand the new PaaS thing 3. PHP + Node.js PaaS host? Preferably with name recognition on par with Heroku, but at least lots of good reviews. Complications of VPS are numerous, so I won't enumerate them. Lots of things to configure, update, and keep alive. Also it isn't the same OS as my dev machine plus I have to manage security for a public server but not for my desktop machine. EDIT: just thought of one more reason I use VPS, I actually like ssh shell access. Ability to edit files and run arbitrary commands, many innumerable uses of this.
  - calloc 14y ago
    https://www.dotcloud.com/ https://www.dotcloud.com/ does all three (Node, PHP and Ruby) along with many others. You can set up different instances, have them access the same database as well. When I was in their beta program when they first started out they also gave you shell access to the machine so you could see what was being deployed, and run arbitrary commands (perfect for having an Python app that required running paste for upgrading the DB to the latest version). In my experience with them I had absolutely no issues, it was fast to configure and set up and their command line tools were fantastic. It used git if you wanted it to, or could use any arbitrary directory and upload the contents. Not only that but you could modify the nginx config file to change redirects and set static directories that shouldn't be handled by WSGI so that you could take a load off the Python app from serving up requests for static content. I haven't used dotCloud in over 8+ months now, if not longer, their pricing just didn't make sense for me, and I found it cheaper with all the sites I host to just go with a single dedicated server rather than use their services so maybe a lot has changed, but they sound like what you need.
  - codesuela 14y ago
    dotCloud (not affiliated) might fit your needs. You can run various mixed stacks on one platform and as far as I remember from testing it they leave you more freedom than e.g. Heroku. Only drawback is the pricing which in your case would be at least 99 USD pm.
salsakran 14y ago
To be fair, customers should be comparing PaaS pricing to their own fully loaded cost to roll-their-own. If a PaaS can't beat the internal price (including time, hiring ops people,etc), they're fighting a losing battle.
- stickfigure 14y ago
  Sure, as long as the internal price doesn't "drastically underestimate the effort required". Which it rarely fails to do. Even worse, most internal measurements drastically underestimate the competence required.