Simple open source app hosting
m4nu
Hosting Provider
I'm building a container service to run open source apps with a few clicks, while revenue-sharing with authors (if they choose so).
Currently in free beta, so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 $20 $5 in free account credit, which is more than enough to run 3 medium-sized pods for a year. New apps are added all the time. Currently we have:
- PhotoPrism: AI-powered photo organizer
- Uptime Kuma: Similar to Uptime Robot, currently the most popular app among LEx users π
- ListMonk: Newsletter management, like Mailchimp
- Code Server: Run VS Code in the browser
- and many others, with more coming
Also happy to receive feedback here or answer questions. In particular I'm interested:
- Which apps would you want to see?
- Thoughts on pricing?
- Missing features or bugs (I'm also watching for bugs in Sentry)
Thanks for testing!
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Comments
Welcome and thanks for your offer, but may be firstly you should ask for a provider tag
Dentistry is my passion
Didn't realize this was needed for free offers (no live billing on this site), since the rules say:
If I misread it, I'll remove it and wait a week of course.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Is it applicable for existing testers ?
Why?
Anyone with an existing account already has a $50 credit, check https://www.pikapods.com/account?tab=1
Using Uptime Kuma for NatVPS.net Uptime Stats.
Saves effort & time which can be better utilized elsewhere.
https://webhorizon.net
Interesting, I had thought it was a time based beta. I still only have one pod, so in theory I could go for like 3 years if I keep it small. Are you sure you're OK with that? Maybe you should make promotional account credit expire in 12 months.
Thoughts so far:
I'm happy if someone is stress-testing the service and helping me learn about bottlenecks and bugs without the stress of real money. So feel free to use your welcome credit any way and for as long as you like.
No way to reserve a subdomain yet, just be quick to rename the new pod. Or just map your own domain.
You can estimate the price on the frontpage. There is a calculator near the bottom. Else the Resource tab isn't super-hard to reach.
Also thanks for the app suggestions. I'll go over them today and start adding more. Also plan on publishing some containers of my own, if the project doesn't have one yet. Progress as always here: https://feedback.pikapods.com/
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Could I suggest doing some example configs for popular apps and showing estimated pricing?
Example: I don't really know what the CPU or memory requirements would be for an Uptime Kuma instance with 50 monitors.
π¦π
Apps have minimum resource requirements. For Uptime Kuma and most apps that's pretty low, for PhotoPrism or NextCloud it's higher. Those will be selected when adding a new Pod and you can't go below that. Else the app would crash from low memory, lack of storage, etc.
I do agree that the estimated cost could be shown together with each app. Like "Run your own from $x/month". Added a new item for this on https://feedback.pikapods.com/.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Is there going to be a free-tier ?
Planning to move my Ghost blog to this aswell.
https://webhorizon.net
I was planning on giving some free welcome credit, but no free tier. With your beta tester credit you can run Uptime Kuma and Ghost for maybe 2 year for free.
BTW: I'm also a paying customer of WebHorizon. The circle closes. π
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Nice
https://webhorizon.net
Added the apps you requested, as well as PrivatePin for hosting code snippets and Smokeping for latency monitoring. πͺ
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Wow, I had thought you meant you added them to the todo list, but no, they're already in the catalog. Thanks!
... There go my concerns about the beta credit lasting beyond a reasonable testing period. In a good way, of course!
Thanks for the generous credit!
Would actually love to move some stuff to this platform; ever thought of adding BookStack?
BookStack was one of the first apps I added. π But had some issues integrating the container image. Just had another look and it seems to work much better with a new image (by the good folks from linuxserver.io).
Let me know if you find any possible issues. You can probably migrate all data via SFTP. There is no DB import/export yet, but do PM me if I can import it manually.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
No idea why I totally missed that bookstack was there! Will give it a go.
Signed up to give Uptime Kuma a try specifically. Thanks for the free credit.
MichaelCee
Finished integrating the first batch of multi-container apps, which was my final larger mile stone. HIghlights:
In progress: Seafile and Discourse. Both a bit tricky. π₯
Enjoy!
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Minimum storage requirement of of uptimekuma is 10GB but does it really need that much? If we could set below that, resources could be utilized better. My instance takes just about 50 MB for example.
Why?
Common question: I had to pick some first step that works for most apps. That was 10 GB. Note that storage is only about $5/TB, so 10 GB is only a few cents more. Since I donβt charge for storing the Docker image or database, it seemed fair to start at 10 GB.
Alternatively, I could start at 1 GB and increase storage pricing a bit at the lower end, if that makes more sense. Still figuring out the detailsβ¦
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@m4nu any possibility to add Grafana+Loki and Prometheus containers for centralized logs/metrics collection?
Yes, definitely looking at adding Grafana+Prometheus. Already have it running internally.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
I hope you could add SG to region selection, that would be awesome.
Will try to add some regions after the beta. Already have a server lined up in the US and could use Leaseweb in SG.
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Any chance the limit of 3 pods will be lifted soon?
Just add any Stripe testing card linked on the billing page and the limit will increase to 10 pods.
And let me know how billing works π
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Could you add that link to the Account Billing tab? The link there right now leads to setup instructions and I was confused thinking the number was maybe embdeded in some sample code and got lazy. I didn't realize there was a nice table on another page.
I finally got around to adding a test card (multiple actually). Not sure if this is what you wanted in terms of feedback but...
The country select on the billing page is weird. I assume it's sorted based on alphabetical ISO Alpha3 codes, but when converted into country names its not alphabetical anymore and unintuitive when just scrolling through the list. "Switzerland" is in the C's and Croatia is in the H's, for example.
I was able to add a Visa, Mastercard, and Amex, but not a Discover, Diner's Club, or JCB. I assumed that meant the top part of the test card list was the common / valid half and the second half was rare and not worth accepting, but then Unionpay worked even though it's the very last one on the first list. Maybe add a list of accepted card types somewhere?
I added 5 cards before I decided I was too lazy to go beyond the first table of test cards, but that already feels overkill. How do you plan to charge people, would it make sense to assign a priority value to each card?
I find it weird that the $50 beta credit is listed as being from today when I know it's been there a while. I'm guessing that's just a technical limitation, a payment method is needed to generate a credit log.
From the TOS
This line makes me smile, but I feel like the comma changes the meaning in an amusing but unintended way.
There is still one borgbase email address in the GDPR under "Access to Account Data", and the privacy policy just slowly transforms from being about pikapods to being about borgbase. Once you finish the legalese, maybe stick a last modified date on those pages?
Thanks for the thorough test, @Ironia! Much appreciated.
Will have the TOS and GDPR stuff updated by the end of the day.
Regarding payment methods, there is already a feature to set one as "primary", but it's not fully enabled in the UI yet.
The welcome credit is added the moment you sign up. It's not paid via any payment method. Later invoices will show up their to add to the balance. So it's really a rolling balance.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com