Tell HN: I built a $5/mo JavaScript-free Rails app
I'm happy about an app I've been working on for over a year. I'm still wrangling with the 'cookies.js' file placed on the client, with a session id, otherwise it's free of any javascript. I hadn't used Redis in the past, had been content with sub-second page loads. Now I'm getting unbelievable (to me) results under 50ms for most pages, except 3rd party API calls for coin prices and service rates.
I'm getting my head around the content security policy, extracting the google fonts into my apps domain, not using analytics.
It's only running on 1cpu/1gb/1appserver, which I've pared down from 4cpu/4gb/2appserver. So it's $5/mo for the VPS. I may have some knowlege to share, if you're interested.
Published in 2021, this chronicle by @victroladixit details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $5/mo.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
I thought you meant you were making $5/mo and was thinking "that is a low bar even I could prob achieve". Nice that you've pared down and optimized your stack to serve up customers with a tiny box.
Have you looked at the Hotwire stuff that came out for Rails? Basically it lets you server render pages but deliver request 2-N over web sockets, and it just delivers the bits that changed, per how you specify. There is client side JS needed but its batteries included.
I wonder if your app (and other cloud hosted) would benefit financially more with lower network ingress/egress byte counts and costs since it is page snippets instead of full-on JSON payloads like traditional JSFrameworkXHRJSONBackend stacks.
even after optimizing your rails app, you still need to send HTML to your users through the interwebs.
you can optimize this by routing all requests through a CDN even if you’re not caching pages at the edge. cdn to your data center uses highly optimized TCP protocols to speed up your packets.
The app is down right now. I'm getting 502 errors