Where to Host a Fullstack Project on a Budget

Learn how I like to host fullstack projects when I'm on a tight budget.
Links from video:
dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/
www.vultr.com/
www.digitalocean.com/
joshtronic.com/2019/12/02/vps...
www.vpsbenchmarks.com/
www.netlify.com/
www.imgix.com/
cloudinary.com/ ​
​
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Follow me online: voidpet.com/benawad
#benawad

[@nicholaskryger-nelson7793]

Lmao I've never seen someone make small talk as an intro to a youtube video.

[@RameshKumar-mv3jd]

I liked it haha I wish it was more common.

[@erifetim]

@@RameshKumar-mv3jd Maybe, but then please please introduce chapter markers xD

[@pedroagma4417]

Yeah, mee too, I was like, wtf? Is he making an experiment? haha. :-)

[@deldia]

Referencing turkey 😂

[@edisco3643]

I loved it, feels like a friend :)

[@Analogicty]

"Had a weird sore throat problem" our boi got the rona first...

[@bloodaid]

He was ronafied before everybody else

[@chris2199]

patient zero lol

[@johnduffy2777]

@@chris2199 lol ya

[@bike4aday]

Lmao this is so funny now looking back on it

[@willysnowman]

i loved AWS until they sent me a bill.

[@victornaut]

f to our soldier

[@dustinkrejci6142]

I had a 1/2 Gb of data I uploaded some years back in S3 bucket -AWS I cannot delete it. I owe like 1,200 dollars in total that last I checked. I was forgiven the debt twice in to separate transactions of avg of like 600 usd each. To this day I still can’t delete the data backup. Yeah. This is what happened when I tried to set up a Minecraft server on AWS ec2 with s3 storage for a backup.

[@matheuss7348]

You have no idea how much i relate to you, but mine is worse... Since my currency is WAY cheaper than dollar and my purchasing power waayy lower than 1st world contry... when got billed... it was like a kidney to pay it out..

[@AbhiKhatri]

@@matheuss7348 LOOOOOOL!

[@ITech2005]

I dont understand you guys at all. AWS is actually one of the cheaper providers. The key is understanding how to set up the services for YOUR use case to save additional $$$. For example, using faragate vs ec2 and reserved instances vs spot.

[@TheUmnez]

This video was a perfect opportunity to plug affiliate links everywhere, but you didn't. Glad to see your focus is on providing value rather than making quick bucks off of shilling.

[@literallybiras]

This is the sort of thing that sets this channel apart you really can tell

[@____-gy5mq]

I hope it stays this way.

[@sourav_mishra]

And I'm really sad to see your comment. It doesn't cost you / trick on you if anyone provides any affiliate link. It just helps the creator. Because if someone is working hard for making content for you, He/she has the right to earn for what he does. But KZbin definitely doesn't pay that much. So, people use affiliate links and they must. :-)

[@davosonic60]

What's wrong with getting money via affiliate links? He needs to eat too, you know? Why would he do everything for free?

[@TheAlexxalm]

@@davosonic60 Because he can do exactly what he teaches us to do and can make more money by practicing what he preaches.

[@swyxTV]

this is incredible advice. thanks so much for laying down some real talk 🙇🏻

[@spaceynb]

This is so helpful thanks! I am mostly a frontend dev and am wanting to start a backend project soon, didn't know about these options.

[@pawelgrzybek]

This video is extremely helpful! It answered all my questions: "Where to host API?", "Where to host frontend?", "Where to host db?". Thanks a lot Ben!

[@driziiD]

very high quality content (as always!), thanks Ben!

[@gkranasinghe]

Absolutely valuable stuff, thanks for sharing your knowledge

[@assaadelhalabi2696]

Thank you Ben, really like how you offer real value in your vids. Lebanese here too brother.

[@lloyd_jvr9152]

These type of videos are gold please make more of these

[@brandon.duffany]

First 30 seconds of this video had me imagining a delectable Thanksgiving meal -- not what I would expect from a software video, but extremely welcome

[@trocomerlo]

Really good resource of knowledge young man. Thank you!

[@rakeshmanathana]

Great video. Surely will be helpful for a lot of people. Really appreciate the unbiased review.

[@frankyb702]

Love your vids. Genuine and honest

[@mohanyadav01]

Very informative and got to know some more options when deploying backend and database services 👍

[@rudhisundar]

This is really some great advice, thank you!

[@sundarb6673]

I would like to thank you profusely for this!!

[@dilaratsch2086]

0:51 Cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) 3:37 Cloud provider cons 4:45 Which cloud provider to choose? 5:27 Alternatives to cloud providers 6:12 Alternative #1: Hosting your database + backend 13:47 Alternative #2: Hosting your frontend 15:17 Alternative #3: Handling user-uploaded images

[@jackdavenport5011]

Thanks!

[@johnfisher1006]

Bro you are the king for this lol. I swear you can't find this information anywhere else

[@alexwolfeboy]

I know I'm late, but I've ALWAYS used DigitalOcean for my hosting. They also provide things like CDNs and databases as services too, but their base servers are really cheap. I've been running my private email server for at least a couple years now, and because of low traffic, I only spend five dollars a month, and I love it.

[@birham07]

Great comparing of VPS and hosts! Did not know about imgix previously. I may consider switching to it from Cloudinary for my currently ongoing project. I only need it to server avatars to end users in two dimensions (not much of transformations, not much of bandwidths) but, am expecting to have a lot of users in future. Thus, hosing images on Google storage and and serving 'em through imgix might be cheaper optimistically doing the calculation. Anyway, will do more in-depth analysis and see. Thank you, Ben for all!

[@MaxPicAxe]

I like that there is no sponsorship here, the video is much more genuine. And I was considering vultr but it seemed to good to be through, didn't expect to come across it here again, so I'll definitely look into that more.

[@folorunso]

Great pieces of advice here. Thanks Ben.

[@WrongAkram]

Great job man, love these breakdowns.

[@Yivan4]

Your voice is so soothing, it made me sleep

[@nshusa99]

Love your videos thanks for making them :)

[@pascaloliv]

Thanks ! Excellent comparative!

[@martind4491]

Thanks mate for such detailed video

[@chubbyshady]

Love these talks 👌

[@victornaut]

This is actually REALLY GOOD advice.

[@awwastor]

No one: The captions: “I am half eleven knees”

[@dimitargetsov9690]

@jakub korba "I am half iranese " -- voice to text machine is stupid, like any machine...

[@nemk]

Great video, very helpful.Thank you very much!

[@jeordincallister4332]

Awesome video! I personally love netlify as well for static sites. Dropping docker containers onto digital ocean has been really nice as well.

[@pieter-jan1000]

Great video. I also like Firebase for FE development. It supports a database, storing images and hosting your website.

[@ckm5528]

This is great content and advice

[@RichardCatto]

Some useful information. Currently, my method is to rent a low end VPS for under $20 pm upon which I load virtualmin control panel (free) and host my domains. I've used typeform (free tier) for some of my forms but found they do not convert well, so currently I'm using an EcWid store to sell my digital goods, which is much better at converting.

[@0dyss3us51]

Heroku is great and Linode is great AWS and Azure shines on bigger and more complex use cases such as very uneven loadspikes

[@bolow]

I love Linode, which has great customer service.

[@sonicplayer1234]

I came here for genuine advice and was surprised to see you as the first video. A sexy and helpful King

[@PlayRiteProductions]

Awesome video! Would definitely like more deployment videos

[@mattdoestechstuff]

Only thing I think you could have mentioned is how some of the VPS providers will provide "shared hosting" and "dedicated VPS", which at first sounds strange as opposed to just renting a dedicated box. The providers can also be sneaky about disclosing this information and will hide it in fine print sometimes. However, the differences come down to the sharing of compute resources between virtual machines on the host. Some hosting providers will 'allocate' your box a certain amount of ram or CPU cores, but can also share these resources with other virtual machines on the host. This type shared hosting can be a huge downside if you are allocated a machine on a host where the other users are maxing out the hosts resources. One example of this is the contabo hosting service provider where they offer two different services being shared and a dedicated VPS. Other than that, good video! Very good insights into hosting options.

[@agilasadi9642]

That is a handy video. Great job

[@codewithfrenchy]

firebase as a simple and free tier "spark" and it's good for some demos

[@starship1701]

I'm just a newbie data analyst that has never touched cloud services before. No idea what I'm doing here. Great video!

[@hagridgam]

What a great video, thanks you ❤️

[@simjans7633]

Self hosting is pretty easy and you can do it using an old computer lying around at your home. It doesn't scale very well, but for small proofs of concept, it's the best bang for the buck.

[@AliAlmahdi]

Been using SSDNodes for quite a while now. Switched to European Data centre recently and I’m quite happy with their service. Never needed their support though.

[@martinnordstrom3213]

Hey Ben! Great video! I agree what you said about hosting on these cloud platforms. It gets very complex and you are bound to the one you choose. I also find it more valuable to have a deeper knowledge in deploying projects, than an aws certificate. So your current setup is having your backend and server on digital ocean on one machine, using a cron work with dokku to backup your database every 24h and then the frontend on Netlify? It would also be cool to know how you would set up different staging envs. I hope I don't flood you with questions. I'm in the deployment stage and this is my first real time doing it! 🤠

[@bawad]

yeah I'm not using any staging envs right now, but I would treat it the same as "prod" just with a different url

[@sabuein]

Thank you, bro.

[@elfullin]

You’re so nice I can’t even 😂

[@dealloc]

For deployment, I can highly recommend Zeit's Now. You can deploy docker containers as services (e.g. databases, APIs, etc.) or just push the project as-is (and Zeit will make their own container, running on their servers). They also offer DNS service, and you can easily deploy services and point them the domain(s) to new builds (also usable with Pull Request "staging" environments). I control all my domains, services and DNS through their CLI which also offers a "local" development for setting up your services and running them as they would run in the cloud, before you deploy.

[@Oxcorp]

I thought you can't deploy docker containers to Zeit Now anymore? I'm not sure how that would work for deplying a database to Zeit, I believe the approach they recommend is to use a remote managed database and run the API/frontend on Zeit Now

[@dealloc]

@@Oxcorp Hey, you're right I totally forgot that Now 2 moved away from Docker. That's unfortunate. But I guess it makes sense when you look at their reasoning behind it; optimize deployment of apps with immutability -meaning that data can't be persisted. Thanks for clearing it up for me it totally went over my head. But I still do recommend it for static pages, serverless services etc. For databases I think Compose is quite good, but you can probably find something else for a lower price with more storage/better hardware.

[@nicolash810]

Great video Ben. The only thing I would like to note is that you made it look like the big cloud companies (AWS, Google, Azure) don't have VPS. I know you know they do, but the wording and video structure infers that they don't because you only showed the managed services and not EC2, Compute Engine or Azure VM. Even if they are usually more expensive than other VPS like DO. About image resizing, I didn't use either service but Cloudinary pricing looks way better. If 1 credit = 1k transforms then you get up to 25k transforms for free. Where imgx you have to pay from $3 (1k) to $75 (25k). At least for images Cloudinary looks better.

[@tylerhurson8515]

Amazon Lightsail was created specifically to solve this problem. It's an AWS service with predictable and transparent pricing and a simplified UI for launching instances with minimal configuration. The smallest instance is dirt cheap- a flat fee of $3.50/month for 512 MB and 20 GB storage. By comparison, Digital Ocean's cheapest droplet starts at $5.

[@mamneo2]

Incroyable!

[@sahadevdahit]

Very interesting and informative. Love 💕💕💕💕💕 bro

[@themarksmith]

Would love to see an update to this video for 2021!

[@oleksandr.brazhii]

I found ImageKit as a really cool image handler. Thanks for the video.

[@YosepRA]

Yeah. Serving image assets and having dynamic sizing of it is a bit of a headache to setup. I also haven't had much luck for setting up myself performance-wise. Cloudinary does have a good offer. But as Ben said, the threshold will keep you awake at night and the price could scale without you knowing why.

[@jubalm]

Great stuff! Also checkout now.sh where you can host static websites: NextJS, React, Gatsby, PHP and pretty much more. Heck you can even build a cloud function (or lambda) that processes your images ala imgix/cloudinary there

[@otmanm4095]

Great content, thanks!

[@amitshahal3420]

Hey Ben, love you’re videos! I’m from Israel ✌️&❤️

[@gerasim-ua]

I don't know if somebody answered your question about 2 last image cloud servces and I don't see problems of calculation (mb I am wrong but not) so 1 credit on first one for 1000 resize (lets not calc data transfer in this case) and for 89$ you get 225 credits and 1 credit = 1000 operations 89/225 = 0.39555 or 0.4 per 1000 ops and second one cost 3$ per the same amount but it's has cheaper data transfer only 3 cents but any way images has no more the 10 MB average size so in worth case if each image 10MB for you will spend 11 credits for (upload and resize image - and much more less to get cropped) ok here is the math first one service 11 credits per 1000 files with size 10mb = ~4.4 second one 3+0.3 = 3.3 which cheaper but with less avg size of image first one became more cheaper my English is very easy (sorry if something not understandable)

[@gerasim-ua]

ok with 1MB average size of image first one just taken took 2 credits (~0.8$) for 1000 files to upload and resize (for download and serve not calculate because it's should be much the more less size of image) second one the same $3.3, so first one depends from images avg size (cheap operations, expensive transfer), the second one from a number of files (expensive operations, cheap transfer), I am finished lol

[@bustamantedev]

Vercel is a very nice alternative for Netlify

[@doublesid1395]

I need a 2023 version of this

[@priceless5386]

Would be interested in seeing you deploying a project to one of these services, setting up the front end, backend and database. Also would like to see the Cron job that backs up to aws.

[@bawad]

Dokku: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d5WrqHWBgLZ7kJY Netlify: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJq4ZIZ-esZ5rc0 Cron job is setup with postgres plugin github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres

[@sashaikevich]

Can you do a tutorial on the virtual machines you have set up to run and backup your apps? I’ve yet to come across this content and I think it’d be a both an original and useful video

[@Universe593]

Personally using Hetzner Cloud. Doesn't have as much out of the box features like aws/digital ocean, but it's one third of the price.

[@christopherderrell8470]

Vultr for the win always, having used GCP and AWS, I cannot recommend another VPS service. The difference between them and others is their network speed has been unmatched, when setting up your OS

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

MacStadium. Can you do a vid on the best way to store documents in a DB for retrieval over the net?

[@marcinwanago9219]

I find the mLab free tier really useful when I'm at the very beginning of a development. I can have a development database up and running really quick this way.

[@elian-dev]

Awesome video

[@ilyaskarim1952]

For storing images, I suggest using Digitalocean Storage.

[@dimitargetsov9690]

Awesome!! Just Awesome!!

[@mieszkaniecKato]

Amazing, merit and clear content! Thank you!

[@rahul_bali]

Value Served !!

[@sarthakkalpande6486]

Very Honest Talk

[@danielahermosillo8991]

Useful! thank you

[@rodrigocaballerohurtado5367]

AMAZING man, this is one the most value added videos I've seen regarding cloud deployments. What would be a good option in order to host a Postgresql Database? thanks!

[@bawad]

I like sticking it in a VPS, but if you want one that's hosted for you, checkout digital ocean's managed postgres

[@rodrigocaballerohurtado5367]

Fiar enough, maybe prod db could be managed and staging/dev might rely on VPS. Thanks!

[@br0nhy]

@Ben Awad Have you also tried image resize with Nginx?

[@ow5909]

great video - thanks! What is your take on using Firebase in terms of cost?

[@Narslimmus]

Never expected to come across a fellow Lebanese randomly on a tech tutorial, the "on a budget" makes much more sense now hahahahaha, no wonder we're both here!

[@Computerix]

I guess all of us Lebanese are choosing to watch this video because of the "on a budget" part 😂

[@DanBP21]

Hi Ben! How do you manage the security?

[@ignaciotonolidemaussion3249]

Thanks for the video! You mentioned you tried to set up your own assets/image manager service. Did you use thumbor? If not how did you did it? How bad was the performance compared to imgix or cloudinary?

[@bawad]

I considered it, but even serving a static image from nginx was too slow for my liking, so I figured resizing stuff through thumbor would make it even slower I didn't record any hard numbers

[@RektOrNah]

I've been using DigitalOcean for ~3 years now, I found it to be cheap but effective.

[@fictionstudios6876]

For database what do you use?

[@HPrivakos]

If you need VPS in Europe, check scaleway.com, it's even cheaper and super reliable, I use it since 2 years, they are owned by the second biggest dedicated servers hoster in France

[@luisnaranjo3972]

@@fictionstudios6876 I set them up in Digital Ocean as well, though my projects are never too big for that to be a corcern

[@TheUmnez]

It's literally the most expensive VPS provider.

[@RektOrNah]

@@TheUmnez they certainly are cheaper than AWS so they are not the most expensive, for $5 and the amount of support should anything go wrong is extremely cheap. Not sure where you're getting them being the most expensive from?

[@ishaankamra779]

How can I know if my react app will be able to function in 100GB bandwidth on netlify or it would need more?

[@gangsterism]

AWS Lightsail is great for small budget

[@EndermanAPM]

I like to use Scaleway (cheaper than vultr and DO)

[@ToroPichu]

Hi Ben, Thanks for sharing such amazing explanation. Can I ask you your opinion about hosting on Heroku? I have few experience deploying on the cloud and I found that Heroku makes the deployment very easy and it has a free & hobby plan which in my opinion it's great for creating proof of concepts. Love your videos man, all the best. Regards, Max

[@FakeAccount-lh1pd]

it charges man like crZy thats why I came here to I can take itof there and host it here

[@erickshaffer6615]

Any advice on kubernetes cluster? Would you still go VPS?

[@dom8429]

i think editing your videos by adding some images of the service you are talking about or summerizing with some text on screen would make them even better. anyways thanks for the advice, i really enjoy listening to you

[@bawad]

I agree

[@KarlOlofsson]

Haha, here I was hoping there was something obviously better than AWS serverless free tier but I guess I'll stick to it for now. AWS Amplify CLI with cloudformation seems pretty nice after all, have you tried that Ben? I find the AWS Console pretty horrible but I've been using some guides that used it to get started.

[@DragPlix]

watching exactly after 1 year

[@michaelpuglisi5108]

About what size instance would you look for to host an api/graphql server and redis?

[@emAyush56]

Thank you.

[@iamvishu591]

youtube lacks such videos

[@ahmadafrakhteh7094]

What is your opinion on shared hosting (like a2 hosting) with e.g. nodejs backend options

[@---ml4jd]

this video was very helpful, please explain how to handle videos.

[@MaJetiGizzle]

Dang dude you say Kibbeh like an American. 😆 Edit: Also half Lebanese. Much love my dude.

[@musicsheddcom]

Thanks for this great unique tutorial. One question, what do you recommend for hosting and serving videos? For example, what if I wanted to create my own KZbin.

[@bawad]

I actually have no idea, I try to avoid hosting video myself and just support embedded youtube videos

[@musicsheddcom]

Ben Awad ok thanks for the response, I also launched my site that you helped me with before. Much appreciated!

[@bawad]

congrats!!

[@mdjahidulislam9205]

hi, i have an android app. I have around 300 active users per day and a total user of around 1000+ so for hosting my server and MySQL database which VPS should be good and budget-friendly?