We (https://cloudron.io) submitted our image last month and it was tested and approved in a few days. Loved the fact that the DO team is so agile and the dev process to get ourselves listed was fairly trivial as well.
If someone has questions about how to create these 1-click images or the approval process, I am happy to answer them from a vendor point of view.
We (Redash) had public AMIs for AWS and GCP for a long time now. But recently started the process of creating a proper marketplace listing with them and DigitalOcean. Needless to say that we're still working on the AWS and GCP listing, while the DigitalOcean one is already live. As with everything, they created a simple and nice experience for the vendors.
I'm confused for years there have been a large collection of 1-click options when logged in. It says here WordPress for instance is New but that has been there forever. Can someone explain how Marketplace currently is different than the 1 click options we have long already have? The main issue has been with WordPress which I imagine is your most popular 1 click option is that it runs on LAMP rather than LEMP (the more modern recommended option). Does this "new" version resolve that? Or am I missing something?
Cross posting a colleague's reply on the blog post [0].
> We’ve had a WordPress stack at DigitalOcean for a long time and it’s tremendously popular – and now we've opened our platform up so partners can bring their 1-Click Apps to all our users through the Marketplace. Openlitespeed has a new WordPress stack too, and we’re also happy to have ideas for changes and new things on ideas.digitalocean.com
That what I was thinking, but they feature ones created by DO there and even label as new for instance for WordPress, so was wondering what was new about the WordPress one click option for instance since already exists.
I assume the difference is that people will be able to delf-deploy their apps to the marketplace. Think of it as an analog to "PPAs" for Ubuntu repositories.
Eddie from the DigitalOcean DevRel team here. We're looking to partner with all the folks to help support and deliver open source and vendor software easily. Here to answer what I can.
The only true benefit turnkey 1-click software truly offers me is not having to worry about configuration and backups, but ironically I always find myself too worried about backups or data integrity to use these types of platforms.
Do you have or are you planning to have a centralized way for these apps to perform and restore backups or is that handled by each partner themselves?
A decent droplet is capable of doing a lot of things, the one-click install seems to be per droplet. I'm not so sure how multiple on-clicks apps work in one droplet, or can it work at all (how to avoid conflicts of automation of multiple robots?)
Eddie, I think it would be neat if we could build vendor images by just supplying docker containers with maybe some type of config.
At Tonic (https://tonic.ai) we do on-prem deploys with docker containers and docker-compose. Its seamless and would be great to use that same flow for Digital Ocean marketplace.
We (Redash) have a similar setup (Docker Compose based) and we used Packer to build the DigitalOcean image. Our setup is public on GitHub, in case you want to copy:
We have some vendors building images with a variety of methods—Packer for example (blog post coming soon). I _want_ to say there is someone building out of a container. We've got a repo [0] with our current process but definitely looking for ways to improve it. You should fill out the vendor form and we'll be in touch [1]!
As a vendor you can add a license / subscription for your stack in your 1-Click App image. Some vendors –such as Plesk and cPanel– are already doing this today. We plan to make this easier for both you and your users this year with direct billing.
@eddiezane, recurrent billing/subscriptions would turbocharge the use of your marketplace for paid images. It would allow vendors to charge a lower upfront amount, which would lower the barrier to experimentation. Users could dive in and, if they like the software, keep the droplet + subscription going indefinitely.
A very DigitalOcean twist would be if you allowed the subscriptions, like the droplets, to be billed per hour.
For instance, a user could deploy a $5 droplet to test a $2 per month image. If the user terminates the image within one hour, the total cost would be 7c for the droplet and 3c for the paid image, totaling 10c. If DO takes a 30% cut, the vendor receives 2c (woo-hoo!). It would be, essentially, a free trial, but with the benefit of establishing the precedent, in the user's mind, of paying for good, supported, server software.
If, however, the user wants to continue using that image, they will pay $5 every month for the droplet and $2 for the image, of which the vendor receives $1.40 every month.
Another very DigitalOcean twist would be if the vendor had the option to charge a percentage of the droplet price, allowing them to charge less to users of the cheapest droplets but more to users of large droplets who are, presumably, deriving more value from their use of the image, and would be more likely to require support from the vendor.
For example, the vendor could set his price at 20% of the droplet cost, meaning that a $5 droplet would cost an additional $1 per month or 1.5c per hour (of which the vendor would receive one cent).
The vendor would make the money necessary for a viable business on larger droplets. For example, on an $80 (16GB) droplet, the image cost would be $16 per month, of which the vendor would receive $11.20.
An image with a hundred or so large users and a few thousand small users would become a viable business that the vendor could energetically promote outside DO, pulling more users into the DO platform.
My hope is that DigitalOcean will approach this marketplace with imagination, not make too many presumptions about how it should evolve and allow actual demand to shape it. While it is good to showcase the images that are going to be useful to a huge number of users, such as the generic WordPress image, your marketplace could truly soar by allowing a vast hinterland of lesser-used images, that, cumulatively, would result in far more usage. Let a million forks bloom. It would differentiate you from all the other hosts who offer one-click generic WordPress.
For example, imagine if thousands of WordPress plugin and theme creators decided that pointing towards their DO Marketplace image was the easiest way to get their customers up-and-running, and the most effective way to continue getting paid for their work. At a stroke, DO would be harvesting a 30% cut of the massive paid WordPress market AND attracting a vast number of new users to your platform.
Not just WordPress, of course, this applies to all forms of server software. DO is in a unique position here to create something akin to the explosion in mobile software development that the App Store sparked in 2008. It would allow thousands of independent developers to create thriving businesses that deliver real value to millions of users, while truly differentiating DigitalOcean.
That was a great move and congrats DO team! We (Countly, https://count.ly) have approach Digital Ocean a few months ago, and we had a very productive email exchange - after a few days, our product was on DO Marketplace.
We (https://cloudron.io) submitted our image last month and it was tested and approved in a few days. Loved the fact that the DO team is so agile and the dev process to get ourselves listed was fairly trivial as well.
If someone has questions about how to create these 1-click images or the approval process, I am happy to answer them from a vendor point of view.