I’ve compiled the 3 best full-stack hosting platforms based on 3 criteria:
- Ease of Use (You don’t need to learn/know dev ops)
- Generous free tiers
- Affordability
Disclaimer: Since we are focusing on full-stack apps we will ignore popular front end hosting platforms like Vercel and Netlify. These are great solutions for deploying frontends, but they do not let you deploy your own backend.
1) Railway
Railway launched in 2020. The platform is growing in popularity with startups and solo developers.
Best of all, it is incredibly affordable. Their developer plan offers 100 GB of disk and 32GB of RAM. Depending on your app’s hourly usage, this can cost you a couple of dollars a month.
I am currently running photorake (lots of disk usage!), comb, and umami for $1 a month on Railway. This is the best pricing I’ve found across the board.
Pros
- Logs & monitoring within web UI
- Automated Git based deploys via Github
- Flexible Pricing (only pay for what you use)
- $10 of free credits a month
- Easy to use App Starters
- Apps never go dormant due to inactivity
Cons
- Uncapped expenses when your app’s scales
2) Render
Render launched in 2018, and they’re positioning themselves to be the next Heroku. You can host static sites, web apps, background workers, cron jobs, Postgres databases, and Redis caches on Render.
They have a similar pricing model to Heroku where you pick the infrastructure up front based on your RAM and CPU needs. Their prices are heavily discounted when compared to Heroku, which is awesome.
Pros
- Competitive Pricing with Heroku
- Logs & monitoring within web UI
- Automated Git based deploys via Github
- Various apps supported (static sites, bg workers, cron jobs, DBs)
- One-click Quick Start Deployments
- Expenses are fixed based on plan
Cons
- Disk is $0.25/GB (3x EBS pricing on AWS)
- Free apps go dormant after 15 minutes of inactivity
3) Heroku
Heroku is the original developer friendly platform for full-stack web apps since 2007. It is popular with enterprises, startups, and solo developers alike.
You can host full stack apps, Postgres DBs, Redis Caches, and Apache Kafka queues. Rails and Django apps are commonly hosted on Heroku.
Pros
- Great for Rails and Django Apps
- Logs & monitoring within web UI
- Automated Git based deploys via Github
- Robust Add-ons Ecosystem
Cons
Which is my favorite?
After having tried the above platforms, I’ve decided to run my apps on Railway. The fact I don’t have to know my CPU/RAM needs up front, their affordable pricing, and the fact my apps never go dormant have won me over.
I’m only paying 1$ a month to host 3 web apps with Railway.
I encourage you to give these 3 a try and find your favorite; you won’t be disappointed.
If this helped you narrow down a platform for your next side project, give me a follow on twitter, and subscribe to my newsletter.
Happy Hacking! 😎
The post The 3 Best Full-Stack Hosting Platforms (2022) first appeared on 💻 Web Dev With Seb.