This looks sleek, but I’ll ask the obvious question: Why use this over Heroku? I couldn’t find a good answer to that question from a quick look at the website, aside from maybe the fact that it uses AWS and Digital Ocean.
It is easy to start on Heroku. With one app, one process.
When you have multiple apps and several processes there is a way to reduce costs and not loose in convenience.
$10/mo droplet can hold plenty of apps and it is still $10/mo. If you don't need a production grade Database – Appliku has them at 0 cost.
Back in a day I moved several of my side projects to Heroku. I was happy until i received a $90+ invoice by the end of the month. Now a $10/mo droplet holds even more projects for me.
With that said, I think you have a great product and could probably make some decent money by offering some combination of niche features. Ideas off the top of my head:
* Integrated metrics. Since you're primarily targeting Django apps, it should be feasible to collect health/performance stats from the apps and display them in a simple dashboard. You don't need to offer very much here; most companies would be more than happy with basic stats related to response times per route, although SQL query times would be really neat to see.
* Automatic scaling for your Python projects. If you could apply the same ease of deployment to horizontal scaling, that would be really valuable.
* Easy integration with AWS services like S3, SES, and SNS. You could do this in a number of ways. One idea is to provide a set of Django libraries that, for instance, makes sending SMS messages super simple, with no configuration needed when used via Appliku. Or you could integrate with existing libraries and just remove the configuration step for the developer.
With at least one of the above (or some other differentiator), I could see Appliku taking off. In any case, you have a great product, and I wish you the best of luck!
So first I am thinking what is the best way to offer scaling. There are so many ways how it can be done and in other comment threads there are hot debates happening about that. It is still an open question.
I was thinking about tailoring more features for django too. Not only price is different, but I picked Django for a reason. It is a great suggestion about metrics per route. I haven’t thought about it before.
Integration with AWS services – Yes. That’s why initially i had a wide range of recommended Policies to include in AWS credentials. My goal was to make automation around creating not only app but all auxiliary services without the need for user to deal with AWS manually.
basically let appliku orchestrate 3rd party services in order to get the “recommended setup”.
So not only I have limited positioning to Python/Django niche, but next tools that will appear will make people using this popular framework way happier by taking away their pain.
Thanks for your suggestions. Hope to speak with you in our Discord :) https://appliku.com/discord
But I wanted a solution where I don't need to remember anything DevOps while writing/shipping my apps.
I also added a generous free plan that allows all features. Then AWS has free credits so one can start their next big thing without expenses and not learning a single thing about deployment at all
No, I can’t imagine that. Why would performance be any different? I imagine most of these kinds of solutions use Docker behind the hood anyway, so they’re likely to be identical.
To clarify, I mention "performance" in terms of the speed of "from commit to deploy", not the CPU/IO performance of an already deployed application.
What they offer for $250 per process can be done at $60/mo per whole app.
When I helped them move all background workers and all non-production apps to Digital Ocean they ended up saving $7k/mo which blew my mind.
It is easy to start on Heroku, but staying there is a black hole in any budget.
Thankfully we've built Heroku Config Vars sync so one can move off of Heroku gradually.
only if developer/devops/admin time is free and for most it isnt. if 60 vs 250 /month is a breaking factor for you and your use case: go for it. if you need the software deployed to make real business it just doesnt matter.
No wonder AWS can get away with the prices they have since people like you (and many more VC funded startups) simply have zero care about the price.
For people who run "real" businesses (meaning you need to have a larger income than expense [meaning, everything not VC-funded]), price is always a part of the calculations, even when it comes to hosting.
Same goes for other time-consuming activities like code coverage or even running the tests. If the applications running on the platform are somewhat heterogeneous, then you can start doing really aggressive performance work.