Simple open source app hosting

m4nu · March 2022

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 😄
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!

Chievo · March 2022

@m4nu said:
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 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 😄

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!

Welcome and thanks for your offer, but may be firstly you should ask for a provider tag

m4nu · March 2022

@Chievo said: Welcome and thanks for your offer, but may be firstly you should ask for a provider tag

Didn't realize this was needed for free offers (no live billing on this site), since the rules say:

anyone can post free offers.

If I misread it, I'll remove it and wait a week of course.

jmaxwell · March 2022

@m4nu said:

Currently in free beta, so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 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:

Is it applicable for existing testers ?

Erisa · March 2022

@jmaxwell said:

@m4nu said:

Currently in free beta, so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 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:

Is it applicable for existing testers ?

Anyone with an existing account already has a $50 credit, check https://www.pikapods.com/account?tab=1

Abdullah · March 2022

Using Uptime Kuma for NatVPS.net Uptime Stats.

Saves effort & time which can be better utilized elsewhere.

Ironia · March 2022

so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 in free account credit, which is more than enough to run 3 medium-sized pods for a year.

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 love the subdomain I got randomly assigned for my first pod! Is there a way to reserve it if I ever destroy the pod and replace it with something else? I figure the chances of it being randomly assigned to someone in the interim are low but it did make me smile so I'd like to be sure...
Many of the apps I'm most interested in, I can already install on my Yunohost instance... But I was not even aware that Yunohost offered some of them. This might be because you have a smaller selection, but also I think it's a nicer catalog to browse.
For apps I would like added... Are Calibre-web (ebook management), Rsshub (feed generator) and The Lounge (IRC Client) possible? I also wanted to ask for wallabag but I see someone else beat me to it.
Is there a place to view the approximate cost per pod per month without digging into the resource configuration tab? Preferably for specific existing instances, but even just a number "assuming minimum permitted resources for 31 days" per app type would be helpful.
Now that pods can be turned on and off, is there any way to automate/schedule that? I was curious whether people wanted that feature because they only needed a pod for certain days of the month or certain hours of the day. Do they just want Navidrome up when they're at work? Do they just want Change Detection up for black Friday? I'm sure you can't share metrics because privacy, but wondering about the use case made me wonder if it's something specific enough to automate.

m4nu · March 2022

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/

Harambe · March 2022

@m4nu said: You can estimate the price on the frontpage. There is a calculator near the bottom.

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.

m4nu · March 2022

@Harambe said:
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.

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/.

Abdullah · March 2022

Is there going to be a free-tier ?

Planning to move my Ghost blog to this aswell.

m4nu · March 2022

@Abdullah said:
Is there going to be a free-tier ?

Planning to move my Ghost blog to this as well.

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. 😄

Abdullah · March 2022

@m4nu said:
BTW: I'm also a paying customer of WebHorizon. The circle closes. 😄

Nice

m4nu · March 2022

@Ironia said: Are Calibre-web (ebook management), Rsshub (feed generator) and The Lounge (IRC Client) possible?

Added the apps you requested, as well as PrivatePin for hosting code snippets and Smokeping for latency monitoring. 💪

Ironia · March 2022

@m4nu said:

@Ironia said: Are Calibre-web (ebook management), Rsshub (feed generator) and The Lounge (IRC Client) possible?

Added the apps you requested, as well as PrivatePin for hosting code snippets and Smokeping for latency monitoring. 💪

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!

caracal · March 2022

Thanks for the generous credit!

Would actually love to move some stuff to this platform; ever thought of adding BookStack?

m4nu · March 2022

@caracal said: Would actually love to move some stuff to this platform; ever thought of adding BookStack?

BookStack was one of the first apps I added. 😄 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.

caracal · March 2022

No idea why I totally missed that bookstack was there! Will give it a go.

MichaelCee · March 2022

Signed up to give Uptime Kuma a try specifically. Thanks for the free credit.

m4nu · March 2022

Finished integrating the first batch of multi-container apps, which was my final larger mile stone. HIghlights:

Paperless: index and categorize your paper documents
Rocket.Chat: chat app, similar to Slack
Wiki.js: simple wiki page for documentation, etc.
Wallabag: Like "Pocket", fetches websites and keeps them for later.

In progress: Seafile and Discourse. Both a bit tricky. 😥

Enjoy!

jmaxwell · March 2022

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.

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.

m4nu · March 2022

@jmaxwell said:
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.

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 don’t 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 details…

stevewatson301 · March 2022

@m4nu any possibility to add Grafana+Loki and Prometheus containers for centralized logs/metrics collection?

m4nu · March 2022

@stevewatson301 said:
@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.

Leftup · March 2022

I hope you could add SG to region selection, that would be awesome.

m4nu · March 2022

@Leftup said:
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.

AaronSS · March 2022

Any chance the limit of 3 pods will be lifted soon?

m4nu · March 2022

@AaronSS said:
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 😄

Ironia · March 2022

@m4nu said:

@AaronSS said:
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 😄

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.

Ironia · March 2022

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

"Thanks for using PikaPods." A TOS is serious enough that I feel like it should be "thank you" instead of "thanks"
"Please use this service, like a civilized person."
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?

m4nu · March 2022

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 open source app hosting

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