I have dedicated 4 years of my life to building a solution for easy deployment of [primarily] Python and Django apps.
Think of it as an equivalent of Laravel Forge/Hatchbox but for Python apps.
For those who are not familiar – Platform as a service on your cloud or on-prem servers.
I have posted here 2 years ago and a lot has changed since then.
What's new: - New great and easy to use dashboard - backups for databases - cronjobs - stats resources of servers and apps - tons of stability improvements.
Interestingly, when I started building Appliku, there was only Forge and Hatchbox, and that was enough of a validation for this type of service.
In the second year, a few more services popped up.
In the third year, the market was flooded with various services in this space. All of them were and still are generic for all languages and frameworks. The most popular niche I've observed is on top of AWS, but still – for any programming language.
Back to Appliku and Python/Django niche: The reason I picked this niche and STAYED in this niche is that not only I can build the service for them, but I also can support users of the Python/Django stack better, answer most of their questions, and help with problems from on top my head very fast and help them achieve their goals quickly. I also know NodeJS stack and NextJS, and we have a small number of such apps deployed as well. Appliku's dashboard is NextJS too.
But I can't do such support for other programming languages and frameworks.
Regarding customizations and trying to fit all cases into one platform: With a focus on Django comes a narrowing down on the expectations and requirements for the deployment process. Django projects are monoliths that, most of the time, either fit the standard Dockerfile or need a few tweaks to one.
The biggest category of requested customization so far was adding different types of databases. Thanks to docker, this is relatively easy to add.
And thanks to this low variety, the whole service is pretty easy to use as we don't need to offer/allow a million ways to configure your app compared to what other PaaS are trying to do(especially VC-backed) because they need to cater to everyone.
Thanks again, TGIF, and have a great upcoming weekend!
Does Appliku essentially get root to any server I put under its control? What happens to the server if I stop paying the monthly installment? How does it work, and how do you guarantee security?
In fact you can add a server through custom server option, then remove it from appliku and remove appliku keys. Free approach to quick server setup :) Appliku doesn’t leave any trace or back door or additional software on your your server. Only ssh authorized keys.
Also none of your data except for build logs and everything related to configuration is stored on our servers either.
That being said, it's unbelievable that you managed to do this alone. The site looks very well built, at least for my non-developer, noob-programmer eyes. I'll definitely give it a try.
I am curious what makes it tough to deploy on render?
I didn’t do it alone, the marketing website, illustrations, logo, testing and a lot of product work was done by my cofounder @krisindev
But all of the coding of the app itself yes - that’s me :)
Would you like to join our discord https://appliku.com/discord and so I can ask you a million questions about your struggles with deployments? Always curious to hear what other devs are doing.
Have a great day!
Now I'm in the DO process. The onboarding could be much smoother than that.
Databases. Our database offering doesn't try to compete with other managed DB providers where they have tons of people busy with databases alone. And we have only me to code everything. So super durable and high availability databases is not our game at least for now.
We provide backups and few tools around databases. That's usually quite enough for smaller project, staging environments, but for High Availability best to pick RDS and stuff like that.
Ping me via live chat or our discord, I am sure it will be interesting to chat/talk!
Pure docker under the hood.
There are some plans for clusters, but there is plenty of work ahead even without them.
It is indeed never-ending work of improvements, and catching up with versions of pieces of software.
Even when I have done something and I like it, 2 weeks later I come back and find how it can be massively improved
Feedback from happy users reminds me why I am into that and fuels my enthusiasm to keep going =)
I have a guide about DataDog setup in progress. What else?
It uses docker under the hood, you don’t have to work with docker locally. But your app needs to respect environment variables and have a Procfile in the root with a list of commands to run your app.
Example: https://gitlab.com/speedpycom/speedpycom-backend/-/blob/main...
