Show HN: Deploy Docker Containers Without Setting up/Managing an Infrastructure
dorch.cloud
The product idea occurred to me about 18 months ago, while working at a different startup. The strategy of the CEO was, spray-and-pray: we created lots of products hoping one would take off. Despite being a small team working on many things, I would say we tried in terms of product quality. Our products weren't what I would consider Grade-A, engineering-wise, but they worked well for the most part. However, when it came to infrastructure, we couldn't say the same. We always had one or two things breaking every now and then.
Now, you would ask, why not just use Kubernetes. Well, we thought of that. But considering how small we were and how much workload we had, there was no way we could operate Kubernetes effectively. Yes, we could have also employed a managed Kubernetes solution, but for a startup which already spends a lot on core infrastructure, due to how many projects we operated, management wouldn't approve of a managed Kubernetes solution.
There are also solutions like Heroku. However, as a company where containers are our standard unit of deployment, and tries to avoid platforms that try to lock customers in, Heroku and its likes were also off the table.
Platforms like Render are definitely an option. But while there are many lovers of Render and similar products, we just did not like the experience. We are of the opinion that Render was doing too many things. We just wanted to deploy containers. We were not looking for a platform offering 101 ways to deploy, but instead, we wanted 1 standard and open way to deploy. In short, Render felt like trading one pain for another discomfort.
The solution we eventually settled for was to come up with a crude internal solution. After taking off a few months from product development entirely, with a couple of bash scripts, python scripts, and custom-built binaries, we were finally able to fortify our infrastructure, which held up for a while.
Even though we (temporarily) solved the problem, it got me thinking a lot. I came to the obvious realization that infrastructure isn't as perfect as we sometimes assume. There are still gaps in the infrastructure space and we just saw one of them. As someone who had been looking out for a problem to found a startup around, I soon began working on what would become DOrch today.
On Jan 8, I launched DOrch. While the Pro & Enterprise models are our destination, the basic model which is now out (https://DOrch.cloud/) for Engineers, Indie Hackers, and Startups, offers a peak into what the Pro & Enterprise models could offer. We are currently building on the back of AWS. Our long term goal also includes operating our own data centers ourselves. We hope we get there.