An alternative to tools lik sst.dev or serverless framework, or a PaaS services like Render.com or Flightcontrol.
Deploys to user's own AWS. IaC-first. Has a PaaS-like console UI.
The best features: auto-generates IaC config by scanning your code. Has built-in EC2 runner which is 2-6x faster than AWS CodeBuild.
We've now also implemented dev mode, which is similar to SST. It deploys parts of the stacks that can't be locally emulated (lambda functions, cognito, etc.) with fast re-deploy, and emulates everything else (containers, SQL databases, Redis, DynamoDb, etc.) locally. This means testing/developing is pretty much free, and you have the fastest feedback loops possible.
Whole Stacktape, and dev mode in particular is also very optimized for coding agents with `--agent` flag.
To try it, run `npx stacktape init`
EDIT: Changed the link to github. Stacktape core is now open-source.
Previously I built a jar/docker and deployed to a common server. Fine.
Can this service deploy this to AWS free tier? Will it "know" how to avoid any paid services? (I don't necessarily need a docker or even permanent storage yet)
EDIT: Also - charging a % of AWS bill is pretty wild...
The cheapest way to deploy a container accessible over HTTP is to use web-service resource (which uses AWS ECS loadbalanced with HTTP-Api-Gateway, which is pay-per-use) and use EC2 launch type (cheapest instances are only a few $). Not sure if it's still under AWS free tier, but definitely not expensive.
Regarding charing % of AWS bill - yes, we're changing that soon. It's going to be flat fee + 10% of AWS bill.
Our free tier covers 90% of vibecoder, freelancer and side-project use-cases though. So probably nothing to worry about unless you're a 2+ person business. And at that point, it's still far less expensive than having a DevOps person or learning all of the 150,000 AWS loopholes yourself.
Stacktape is a PaaS that deploy to user's own AWS account.
v3 adds many new features, but namely the ability to generate IaC config directly from code, by analyzing the user's repository (both deterministically and using multiple AI techniques).
For example, if it assumes your application is a Web API that uses Postgres and Redis, it will create a Stacktape IaC config that deploys Fargate container, load balancer, Aurora Serverless v2 Postgres and Elasticache Redis (behind the scenes it will also configure things like networking, VPC, security groups, IAM, etc.)
At https://stacktape.com, we're also in the same space. We're offering Heroku-like experience on top of your own AWS account.
I like what you're doing. But, to behonst, it's a tough market. While the promise of $265 vs $4 might seem like a no-brainer, you're comparing apples to oranges.
- Your DX is most likely be far from Heroku's. Their developer experience is refined by 100,000s developers. It's hard to think through everything, and you're very unlikely to make it anywhere close, once you go beyond simple use-cases.
- A "single VM" setup is not really production-grade. You're lacking reliability, scalability, redundancy and many more features that these platforms have. It definitely works for low-traffic side-projects. But people or entities that actually have a budget for something like this, and are willing to pay, are usually looking for a different solution.
That being said, I wish you all the luck. Maybe things change it the AI-generated apps era.
Yeah I agree with you, but I think thats why maybe Kubernetes is a good place to work from. It already has a massive API with a pretty large ecosystem, so at the base level, the `kubectl` developer experience is about as good as any could be. K8 also makes it reasonably easy to scale to massive clusters, with good resilience, without too much of a hiccup
For those interested in a Heroku alternative, have a look at https://stacktape.com (full disclosure: I'm a founder).
It's a Heroku-like PaaS platform that deploys directly to your own AWS account.
It support both serverless (lambda functions), and serverful (AWS ECS Fargate or EC2) deployments. Besides that, it supports other AWS infrastructure resources, such as RDS, Aurora, Redis, ElasticSearch, etc..
You can deploy from console, using git-push-to-deploy, or even use preview deployments (ephemeral environments for every PR).
I'm sorry for being a bit off-topic, but I'm a founder of a PaaS company myself, and I think that what we offer is a great alternative to Coolify for companies that need a more "managed" and reliable infra.
https://stacktape.com is a Heroku/Vercel-like PaaS platform that deploys directly to your own AWS account.
It supports both serverless (lambda functions), and serverful (AWS ECS Fargate or EC2) deployments. Besides that, it supports other AWS infrastructure resources, such as RDS MySQL/Postgres, Redis, ElasticSearch, etc..
You can deploy from console, using git-push-to-deploy, or even use preview deployments (ephemeral environments for every PR).
Compared to alternatives, it's both very easy to use, and flexible/extensible at the same time. You can use it to quickly deploy anything in a few minutes, yet it will be sufficient to cover even complex infrastructure needs you might run into in the future.
It's completely true, and I AM ashamed for doing it. But it's a terrible time to be a PaaS founder, since there are very few new projects being started at the moment. Without exaggeration, I think there are somewhere between 10% and 20% of new projects being started (which is the only point people will actually choose to use our platform) compared to 2022. Hard times, lower standards. Sorry. We've got ~40 website visitors from that comment so far, and I can't pass on that.
- Situation on the SWE hiring market. It's way harder to find a job.
- I personally know people from SW dev agencies that are all saying its very hard to find an opportunity (project) to work on.
- In fact, I'm 99% convinced that we're in a recession, even though its not official. Companies are cutting costs left and right. And think about it this way. When a company invests in a software, it's an investment for them, which will eventually pay for itself in a few years. But if the company is struggling to just stay alive, investments are the first thing they cut.
I do not have experience with monaco, but you should be able to run the language server remotely and connect to it from the editor via the usual language server protocol.
we currently do not provide a wasm build which would enable us to run the server within the browser too, although that's something I am actively poking around with.
You can also have a look at https://stacktape.com (full disclosure: I'm a founder). It's a Heroku-like PaaS that deploys to your own AWS account.
We support both serverless and container-based workloads (Fargate and EC2), and many AWS infrastructure (RDS, Aurora, MongoDb, Redis, OpenSearch - ElasticSearch, Bastion servers, etc.).
We're IaC-first but also provide a UI for.
We can do a hans-on assistance with the first deployment, and can also do a custom pricing (as you are a non-profit).
Besides that, our UI supports everything you've mentioned... managing secrets, ENV vars, different configurations between stages, etc.
You can also configure more advanced things, such as Alarms based on selected metrics, budgets based on AWS (forecasted or actual) spend, and also deployment progress notifications. The notifications about these can be sen to your Slack or MSTeams channel, or to an email.
We also support GitOps flows - push-to-branch-to-deploy or even preview deployments (creating ephemeral, short-lived environment for pull requests, that will get automatically deleted when the PR is closed/merged).
To be honest, we don't 100% cover what you're looking for in an ideal world, as we have our own deployment engine.
That being said, our deployment engine is pretty powerful (in terms of supported AWS infra resources), and it's based on AWS CloudFormation (with a fallback to making native AWS SDK calls to speed up the deployment, when doing the whole CF deployment procedure is not needed). And we do that in a way so that you don't have to worry about CloudFormation drift, or any unexpected surprises.
Shameless plug: at https://stacktape.com, we also do "Heroku-like PaaS experience" built on top of AWS. But we deploy directly to our user's AWS account.
Since DHH has been promoting the 'do-it-yourself' approach, many people have fallen for it.
You're asking the right questions that only a few people know they need answers to.
In my opinion, the closest thing to "reclaiming the stack" while still being a PaaS is to use a "deploy to your cloud account" PaaS provider. These services offer the convenience of a PaaS provider, yet allow you to "eject" to using the cloud provider on your own should your use case evolve.
> Isn't the entire point of vercel/netlify/cloudflare is that you don't have to self-host? The issue is the price of it, not the actual software.
There's also a third way, which we're trying to do at stacktape[1].
We've built a PaaS platform on top of AWS, running in your own account. So you get all of the stability, flexibility and reliability of AWS, yet the deployment process is easy as using something like Heroku.
Also, compared to Vercel, the pricing is just a % on top of AWS fees, and not a sudden $10k bill, or $550/TB Netflify egress costs.
An alternative to tools lik sst.dev or serverless framework, or a PaaS services like Render.com or Flightcontrol.
Deploys to user's own AWS. IaC-first. Has a PaaS-like console UI.
The best features: auto-generates IaC config by scanning your code. Has built-in EC2 runner which is 2-6x faster than AWS CodeBuild.
We've now also implemented dev mode, which is similar to SST. It deploys parts of the stacks that can't be locally emulated (lambda functions, cognito, etc.) with fast re-deploy, and emulates everything else (containers, SQL databases, Redis, DynamoDb, etc.) locally. This means testing/developing is pretty much free, and you have the fastest feedback loops possible.
Whole Stacktape, and dev mode in particular is also very optimized for coding agents with `--agent` flag.
To try it, run `npx stacktape init`
EDIT: Changed the link to github. Stacktape core is now open-source.