Interestingly, when I started building Appliku, there was only Forge and Hatchbox, and that was enough of a validation for this type of service.
In the second year, a few more services popped up.
In the third year, the market was flooded with various services in this space. All of them were and still are generic for all languages and frameworks. The most popular niche I've observed is on top of AWS, but still – for any programming language.
Back to Appliku and Python/Django niche:
The reason I picked this niche and STAYED in this niche is that not only I can build the service for them, but I also can support users of the Python/Django stack better, answer most of their questions, and help with problems from on top my head very fast and help them achieve their goals quickly.
I also know NodeJS stack and NextJS, and we have a small number of such apps deployed as well. Appliku's dashboard is NextJS too.
But I can't do such support for other programming languages and frameworks.
Regarding customizations and trying to fit all cases into one platform:
With a focus on Django comes a narrowing down on the expectations and requirements for the deployment process. Django projects are monoliths that, most of the time, either fit the standard Dockerfile or need a few tweaks to one.
The biggest category of requested customization so far was adding different types of databases. Thanks to docker, this is relatively easy to add.
And thanks to this low variety, the whole service is pretty easy to use as we don't need to offer/allow a million ways to configure your app compared to what other PaaS are trying to do(especially VC-backed) because they need to cater to everyone.
Thanks again, TGIF, and have a great upcoming weekend!
Interestingly, when I started building Appliku, there was only Forge and Hatchbox, and that was enough of a validation for this type of service.
In the second year, a few more services popped up.
In the third year, the market was flooded with various services in this space. All of them were and still are generic for all languages and frameworks. The most popular niche I've observed is on top of AWS, but still – for any programming language.
Back to Appliku and Python/Django niche: The reason I picked this niche and STAYED in this niche is that not only I can build the service for them, but I also can support users of the Python/Django stack better, answer most of their questions, and help with problems from on top my head very fast and help them achieve their goals quickly. I also know NodeJS stack and NextJS, and we have a small number of such apps deployed as well. Appliku's dashboard is NextJS too.
But I can't do such support for other programming languages and frameworks.
Regarding customizations and trying to fit all cases into one platform: With a focus on Django comes a narrowing down on the expectations and requirements for the deployment process. Django projects are monoliths that, most of the time, either fit the standard Dockerfile or need a few tweaks to one.
The biggest category of requested customization so far was adding different types of databases. Thanks to docker, this is relatively easy to add.
And thanks to this low variety, the whole service is pretty easy to use as we don't need to offer/allow a million ways to configure your app compared to what other PaaS are trying to do(especially VC-backed) because they need to cater to everyone.
Thanks again, TGIF, and have a great upcoming weekend!