Ask HN: Should a solo developer use AWS for his public side project?
I am working on a side project that I intend to launch soon and I am starting to thinking about the "sys" part of the project.
I need pretty basic setup (a db server, a redis one, one for the rails app and a CDN). I am not a sys ops expert but with some work I can set these servers up.
I don't want to use highly managed solutions like heroku, they are too expensive and knowing that I can set up on myself, I want to avoid this high expense.
On the other hand, something in the middle, like AWS has my attention. It would give more flexibility for sure, and I would like to learn it, but their opaque pricing it scares me a bit.
I would like to receive advice for people who can understand my position as a solo developer (with a basic European wage) and who can't afford to spend 100/more euros/month for a project until it pays for itself alone.
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Heroku is $7 a month (not counting 1000 hours free) for a dyno, $9 a month for a 10M rows Postgresql database and Cloudflare is free so it's very affordable to start with in my opinion. How much is your time worth? You can make it a bit cheaper with AWS probably but you'll pay for it with your own time and it'll probably be less robust unless you know what you're doing (e.g. coping with server failure, backups, rollbacks, security, deployment process, scaling, logging).
I like Heroku because it's simple. You can mostly just focus on your code, leaving server and infrastructure configuration to the defaults and know it's going to be robust and secure. AWS and even Digital Ocean have a lot of customisation and complexity which just means more things can go wrong which will eat up your time when you could be coding.
I think AWS is good for side projects. I am also a solo developer and have deployed side projects on AWS so far my experience is very good. As you have mentioned that you can't afford to spend >100 euros/month I think you can go with AWS free tier where it is possible
1- For DB server you can you RDS free tier I would say it would be enough for a side project
2- For Redis Instance you can use EC2 free tier to run single Redis Instance or you can try Amazon elastic Cache as well
3- For Rails app depending upon your need again you can either use free tier server or whatever suits you check different AWS EC2 instance types https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ ↗
4- For CDN you have to use Amazon S3 first and that would cost you and cost depends upon usage + storage, since its a side project bill won't be too much
Happy Deployment ;)
I can really follow your question as it is a really tough one and it all depends on what is your interest, because:
- You can use AWS but you will no doubt spend a lot of time figuring out stuff, BUT if you think it is fun and if you can use it to further your career then it makes total sense!
- If your focus is on the development and not a side project you should really go with something hosted like Heroku because you will be able to spend much more time on development instead of configuration and be spending time worrying if you have done it correctly. Heroku is pretty cheap for what you get in terms of hours saved but you are giving up some flexibility, no doubt!
Use a simpler hosting provider if you're not already familiar with AWS. Power brings complexity, and your product likely won't benefit from solving infrastructure problems you don't have (yet).
That said, once your product outgrows simpler infrastructure I'd wholeheartedly recommend AWS. For the past few years I've been using AWS for my day job and side projects. Prices are competitive, and once you're past the learning curve, you'll have a great deal of flexibility.
Spin up a 2gb+ DigitalOcean server and toss Dokku on it. Feels like Heroku, very reliable, very simple to understand by just reading the Dokku source.
AWS is a great great thing, but has opaque pricing and a lot of nuance to getting everything running smoothly. 99% of projects can survive on a single beefy server for a long time before scaling becomes a concern, at which point that is a good problem to have. Don't make it a bad problem now by making things too complex.