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I've been a long-time Glitch user and am now looking for good alternative platforms. My primary use case involves online coding with a Node.js backend using Exp

I've been a long-time Glitch user and am now looking for good alternative platforms. My primary use case involves online coding with a Node.js backend using Express and some React apps. If anyone has recommendations, I'd greatly appreciate it.

LordShredda 1y ago
I'd recommend, unfortunately, buying a cheap $200 netbook and running cloudflare tunnel on it. As long as you're relying on other people's computers for hosting you'll keep looking forever
- andrewmcwatters 1y ago
  That's nearly 20 years of lowendbox provider annual payments for what this guy is asking for.
  - remram 1y ago
    Or even more years of GCP/OCI free tier VMs. https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features#compute https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features#compu... https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier...
- lxgr 1y ago
  > As long as you're relying on other people's computers for hosting you'll keep looking forever > running cloudflare tunnel There's some irony here.
  - CharlesW 1y ago
    The Cloudflare dependency is for networking, not hosting. It would be very impressive to see a self-hosted service available over the internet without introducing a 3rd-party dependency or two.
    - dec0dedab0de 1y ago
      has the internet really changed that much?
      - lxgr 1y ago
        Generally, I'd say so – life behind CG-NATs can be hard for non-eyeballs. But fortunately IPv6 is maybe finally happening, which solves many of the NAT problems, and in the meantime there's clever things like Tailscale.
    - lxgr 1y ago
      Yes, but my point is that there are many web hosting services, but only very few such proxy services to my knowledge. (Tailscale is another great option if you don't need public reachability.) I don't think it's a great tradeoff, when optimizing for independence of specialized solutions at least.
      - CharlesW 1y ago
        Sorry, yes —¹ I was just gently poking you about the idea of self-hosting outside of one's local network without many 3rd-parties involved. BTW, Tailscale Funnel²³ (in beta) does provide public reachability! ² https://tailscale.com/kb/1223/funnel https://tailscale.com/kb/1223/funnel ³ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpxmfpCl20c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpxmfpCl20c ¹ Please enjoy this hand-typed em-dash.
        lxgr 1y ago
        Oh, nice, I vaguely remembered them doing something in that area but forgot about the details. Thanks for the reminder and the artisanal typography :)
      - apitman 1y ago
        More than a few: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
  - LordShredda 1y ago
    I'm only suggesting it because calling my ISP and asking for a static IP + an open port is a hassle. It's only a way to forward ports
- ignoramous 1y ago
  Workloads allowing, sub £50 SBCs like Banana Pi might do?
- barnabee 1y ago
  My vote for doing this is to get a second hand Lenovo/HP/Dell mini pc. They're cheap (thanks to corporate upgrade cycles and the sheer number of "obsolete" models that are out there on eBay et al.), quiet, reliable, low power consumption, and generally pretty capable for the money.
andrewmcwatters 1y ago
...are you averse to just doing this stuff over a cheap VPS? Here's an affiliate link if you're interested. 1 GB RAM KVM VPS 1x vCPU Core 1 GB RAM 20 GB SSD 2 TB Bandwidth Price: $10.96/Year https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=2502&pid=912 https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=2502&pid=912 I don't work for Racknerd, but my business uses them for our clients. Most of them have low-end requirements. I mean that's less than $1/month right there.
- sabellito 1y ago
  Wait what, 11 USD per YEAR? How.
  - v5o 1y ago
    [dead]
  - h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y ago
    https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/ Lowendbox has lots of cheap shared VPS providers. For small projects that's all you need.
  - PhilipRoman 1y ago
    Run iostat -c 1 and keep an eye on %steal column. IME these cheap VPS cannot be used for anything where response time is a factor. It's fine for static content if you put cloudflare CDN in front of it.
    - andrewmcwatters 1y ago
      Low volume, low resource usage is definitely the best use case for these things. Yeah, you can get a bit more out of them with CDNs or maybe even just some caches.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  The problem is, having a server on the internet is painful because you have to be constantly on guard for patches - if not you'll get hacked sooner than later.
weiliddat 1y ago
Is it more small temporary projects you need to make and throw away, or large projects you keep working on?
raybb 1y ago
It's not nearly the same experience, but I'd argue a bit nicer of one, I'd recommend giving coolify a shot https://coolify.io/ https://coolify.io/ You have to bring your own server to selfhost but it's dead dead easy. If you have a nodejs app you can basically just click "new project from github", select the repo, and click deploy. Then it'll be there on your domain (or a free one) and auto redeploy any time you push to master.
- steivan 1y ago
  Thanks for the Coolify recommendation! After exploring several alternatives following Glitch's closure, I took your advice and set up Coolify on a freshly bought Raspberry Pi. It's been great! I've now got 4 projects running smoothly, and the deployment process is straightforward and exactly what I needed as a replacement for Glitch. Really appreciate the suggestion. Couldn't be happier with the setup!
  - raybb 1y ago
    Glad it's working for you. If you run into any rough edges please do report on GitHub. They're quite responsive to feedback and releasing updates every week
qudat 1y ago
Me and a buddy built https://pico.sh https://pico.sh to make it easy for developers to prototype and share their projects. In particular we have a static hosting service (https://pgs.sh https://pgs.sh) and a tunnel service (https://tuns.sh https://tuns.sh) that should cover most apps in the prototype phase.
- mvexel 1y ago
  Thank you for building the pico services. I use pgs for hosting my simple static website, and prose to host my blog, and it’s just such a wonderful experience. Also it’s been a while since I mailed a check to pay for anything, let alone an online service!
loumf 1y ago
I pair program JS-based games with my nephew remotely using the glitch editor. In the end, it’s just static files. Can anyone recommend another place to do that? What we needed from glitch was the collaborative editing and instant update. I could stand up a server if there’s some open-source glitch-like for just static HTML and JS.
- akoboldfrying 1y ago
  > In the end, it’s just static files. GitHub Pages?
  - loumf 1y ago
    I really want the collaborative editor from glitch. The hosting part is easy.
    - paradox460 1y ago
      GitHub pages with vscode in the browser?
    - paradox460 1y ago
      GitHub pages with vscode in the browser?
    - raymond_goo 1y ago
      https://stackblitz.com https://stackblitz.com and https://github.dev/github/dev https://github.dev/github/dev
- immibis 1y ago
  I've been thinking about offering some kind of independent free hosting for the last few months or so. It seems like there's some need for more free, unenshittified hosting services aimed at non-commercial projects (like Miraheze is for wikis), but I'm very concerned about the legal risks, being outside of the USA (not that it's any better in the USA right now but traditionally it was). Servers are plenty cheap now, but lawyers aren't.

LordShredda 1y ago

I'd recommend, unfortunately, buying a cheap $200 netbook and running cloudflare tunnel on it. As long as you're relying on other people's computers for hosting you'll keep looking forever

andrewmcwatters 1y ago
That's nearly 20 years of lowendbox provider annual payments for what this guy is asking for.
- remram 1y ago
  Or even more years of GCP/OCI free tier VMs. https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features#compute https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features#compu... https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier...
lxgr 1y ago
> As long as you're relying on other people's computers for hosting you'll keep looking forever > running cloudflare tunnel There's some irony here.
- CharlesW 1y ago
  The Cloudflare dependency is for networking, not hosting. It would be very impressive to see a self-hosted service available over the internet without introducing a 3rd-party dependency or two.
  - dec0dedab0de 1y ago
    has the internet really changed that much?
    - lxgr 1y ago
      Generally, I'd say so – life behind CG-NATs can be hard for non-eyeballs. But fortunately IPv6 is maybe finally happening, which solves many of the NAT problems, and in the meantime there's clever things like Tailscale.
  - lxgr 1y ago
    Yes, but my point is that there are many web hosting services, but only very few such proxy services to my knowledge. (Tailscale is another great option if you don't need public reachability.) I don't think it's a great tradeoff, when optimizing for independence of specialized solutions at least.
    - CharlesW 1y ago
      Sorry, yes —¹ I was just gently poking you about the idea of self-hosting outside of one's local network without many 3rd-parties involved. BTW, Tailscale Funnel²³ (in beta) does provide public reachability! ² https://tailscale.com/kb/1223/funnel https://tailscale.com/kb/1223/funnel ³ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpxmfpCl20c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpxmfpCl20c ¹ Please enjoy this hand-typed em-dash.
      - lxgr 1y ago
        Oh, nice, I vaguely remembered them doing something in that area but forgot about the details. Thanks for the reminder and the artisanal typography :)
    - apitman 1y ago
      More than a few: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
- LordShredda 1y ago
  I'm only suggesting it because calling my ISP and asking for a static IP + an open port is a hassle. It's only a way to forward ports
ignoramous 1y ago
Workloads allowing, sub £50 SBCs like Banana Pi might do?
barnabee 1y ago
My vote for doing this is to get a second hand Lenovo/HP/Dell mini pc. They're cheap (thanks to corporate upgrade cycles and the sheer number of "obsolete" models that are out there on eBay et al.), quiet, reliable, low power consumption, and generally pretty capable for the money.

andrewmcwatters 1y ago

...are you averse to just doing this stuff over a cheap VPS? Here's an affiliate link if you're interested. 1 GB RAM KVM VPS 1x vCPU Core 1 GB RAM 20 GB SSD 2 TB Bandwidth Price: $10.96/Year https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=2502&pid=912 https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=2502&pid=912 I don't work for Racknerd, but my business uses them for our clients. Most of them have low-end requirements. I mean that's less than $1/month right there.

sabellito 1y ago
Wait what, 11 USD per YEAR? How.
- v5o 1y ago
  [dead]
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y ago
  https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/ Lowendbox has lots of cheap shared VPS providers. For small projects that's all you need.
- PhilipRoman 1y ago
  Run iostat -c 1 and keep an eye on %steal column. IME these cheap VPS cannot be used for anything where response time is a factor. It's fine for static content if you put cloudflare CDN in front of it.
  - andrewmcwatters 1y ago
    Low volume, low resource usage is definitely the best use case for these things. Yeah, you can get a bit more out of them with CDNs or maybe even just some caches.
mschuster91 1y ago
The problem is, having a server on the internet is painful because you have to be constantly on guard for patches - if not you'll get hacked sooner than later.

weiliddat 1y ago

Is it more small temporary projects you need to make and throw away, or large projects you keep working on?

raybb 1y ago

It's not nearly the same experience, but I'd argue a bit nicer of one, I'd recommend giving coolify a shot https://coolify.io/ https://coolify.io/ You have to bring your own server to selfhost but it's dead dead easy. If you have a nodejs app you can basically just click "new project from github", select the repo, and click deploy. Then it'll be there on your domain (or a free one) and auto redeploy any time you push to master.

steivan 1y ago
Thanks for the Coolify recommendation! After exploring several alternatives following Glitch's closure, I took your advice and set up Coolify on a freshly bought Raspberry Pi. It's been great! I've now got 4 projects running smoothly, and the deployment process is straightforward and exactly what I needed as a replacement for Glitch. Really appreciate the suggestion. Couldn't be happier with the setup!
- raybb 1y ago
  Glad it's working for you. If you run into any rough edges please do report on GitHub. They're quite responsive to feedback and releasing updates every week

qudat 1y ago

Me and a buddy built https://pico.sh https://pico.sh to make it easy for developers to prototype and share their projects. In particular we have a static hosting service (https://pgs.sh https://pgs.sh) and a tunnel service (https://tuns.sh https://tuns.sh) that should cover most apps in the prototype phase.

mvexel 1y ago
Thank you for building the pico services. I use pgs for hosting my simple static website, and prose to host my blog, and it’s just such a wonderful experience. Also it’s been a while since I mailed a check to pay for anything, let alone an online service!

loumf 1y ago

I pair program JS-based games with my nephew remotely using the glitch editor. In the end, it’s just static files. Can anyone recommend another place to do that? What we needed from glitch was the collaborative editing and instant update. I could stand up a server if there’s some open-source glitch-like for just static HTML and JS.

akoboldfrying 1y ago
> In the end, it’s just static files. GitHub Pages?
- loumf 1y ago
  I really want the collaborative editor from glitch. The hosting part is easy.
  - paradox460 1y ago
    GitHub pages with vscode in the browser?
  - paradox460 1y ago
    GitHub pages with vscode in the browser?
  - raymond_goo 1y ago
    https://stackblitz.com https://stackblitz.com and https://github.dev/github/dev https://github.dev/github/dev
immibis 1y ago
I've been thinking about offering some kind of independent free hosting for the last few months or so. It seems like there's some need for more free, unenshittified hosting services aimed at non-commercial projects (like Miraheze is for wikis), but I'm very concerned about the legal risks, being outside of the USA (not that it's any better in the USA right now but traditionally it was). Servers are plenty cheap now, but lawyers aren't.