Ask HN: What cool stuff do you run free-tier?
I recently read a short piece about using Oracle’s always free as a VPN. What other cool projects have you run out of any cloud/hosting provider’s always free offerings? (Pour one out for Angelfire and Geocities)
50 comments
My commercial project Video Hub App is nearly free: https://videohubapp.com/
It's a Gatsby website and I used to use Vercel with their free deployments, but because I also needed a subdomain with PHP I switched to my cheap $3/month (unlimited website) webhost to serve the static files; but I also use Cloudflare for their free CDN. And the app demos are hosted on GitHub through Releases. The storefront is "free" through Chec.io in that I only pay a small fraction of every transaction.
Huge thank you to Vercel for making deploying Gatsby websites so easy (I run https://yboris.dev/ and https://yboris.com/ through them for free). Huge thank you to GitHub (I run https://income-inequality.info/ through it).
It's a Gatsby website and I used to use Vercel with their free deployments, but because I also needed a subdomain with PHP I switched to my cheap $3/month (unlimited website) webhost to serve the static files; but I also use Cloudflare for their free CDN. And the app demos are hosted on GitHub through Releases. The storefront is "free" through Chec.io in that I only pay a small fraction of every transaction.
Huge thank you to Vercel for making deploying Gatsby websites so easy (I run https://yboris.dev/ and https://yboris.com/ through them for free). Huge thank you to GitHub (I run https://income-inequality.info/ through it).
In running OnlineOrNot (https://onlineornot.com/) which itself has a generous free tier, about 5 days of the month I rely on AWS's free tier for AWS Lambda, I managed to run on Vercel.com's free tier with Next.js until around my 8th paying customer, and my business update newsletter relies on ConvertKit's free tier.
I run https://thisstartupacquisitionannouncementdoesnotexist.ajnis... on the free tier of Google App Engine.
And https://www.redditreads.com on the free tier of Google Compute Engine.
And https://www.redditreads.com on the free tier of Google Compute Engine.
I run https://gez.la on Vercel's free tier.
My favorite stack is now google cloud run + DynamoDB.
I built a little template for myself to quickly start new projects, that is also hosted with this free tier:
https://forever-free-cloud-app-starter.chriszhu.me/
I built a little template for myself to quickly start new projects, that is also hosted with this free tier:
https://forever-free-cloud-app-starter.chriszhu.me/
So it's using Google Cloud Run and Amazon Dynamo DB? Seems weird to mix cloud platforms like that
https://algot.io
I use the free tier for firebase to store real time trade data. The front-end was built using Next.js and hosted using the Vercel free tier.
I use the free tier for firebase to store real time trade data. The front-end was built using Next.js and hosted using the Vercel free tier.
http://algostrategies.io
A FE only solution to find trading strategies. Paying only for domain, lives in Amazon s3
A FE only solution to find trading strategies. Paying only for domain, lives in Amazon s3
- Firebase have a very generous free tier
- Github pages is always great
- Github pages is always great
heroku
Since you mentioned Geocities, Neocities [1]
[1] - https://neocities.org/
[1] - https://neocities.org/
Sketchviz [1] runs almost entirely in free tiers from Cloudflare and AWS:
- Cloudflare to avoid big bandwidth bills from AWS for the wasm-compiled graphviz that is on every page
- AWS Lambda's 1M free requests and 400,000 GB-seconds for expressjs (web serving) and graphviz (rendering hostable .png images)
- API Gateway's 1M free requests for routing HTTP -> AWS Lambda (for the app) or S3 (for hosted PNGs)
- S3's 20K GET requests/mo (for hosted PNGs)
The only one I exceed is S3, but it's dirt cheap.
[1]: https://sketchviz.com/new
- Cloudflare to avoid big bandwidth bills from AWS for the wasm-compiled graphviz that is on every page
- AWS Lambda's 1M free requests and 400,000 GB-seconds for expressjs (web serving) and graphviz (rendering hostable .png images)
- API Gateway's 1M free requests for routing HTTP -> AWS Lambda (for the app) or S3 (for hosted PNGs)
- S3's 20K GET requests/mo (for hosted PNGs)
The only one I exceed is S3, but it's dirt cheap.
[1]: https://sketchviz.com/new
Nice. I assume you are hosting PNGs for 'get embed code' feature?
Could you instead store diagram definition in DynamoDB free tier, and create PNGs on the fly?
Could you instead store diagram definition in DynamoDB free tier, and create PNGs on the fly?
Yeah, it's for get embed code.
Could definitely have used Dynamo as a persistent layer, but the PNGs are transient - the definition is stored in a GitHub gist owned by the user (another free tier! :). But generating the PNGs is expensive, so they get cached in S3. An S3 lifecycle rule automatically prunes PNGs older than a month, and they'll get regenerated from the gist if needed.
Could definitely have used Dynamo as a persistent layer, but the PNGs are transient - the definition is stored in a GitHub gist owned by the user (another free tier! :). But generating the PNGs is expensive, so they get cached in S3. An S3 lifecycle rule automatically prunes PNGs older than a month, and they'll get regenerated from the gist if needed.
A month seems like a long time, I’d have assumed you could probably delete 95% of the images within 3 days. Out of interest is the month long expire rule a guesstimate or something based on actual numbers?
It's just a number, I haven't looked at any request logs to see what hit rates are like.
From a money perspective, expiring them never would be fine, and a good trade off to get better latency on subsequent loads. However, if the underlying gist is deleted, I'd like the PNG to eventually go away.
From a money perspective, expiring them never would be fine, and a good trade off to get better latency on subsequent loads. However, if the underlying gist is deleted, I'd like the PNG to eventually go away.
Super cool!
Curious does your implementation of DOT support embedding of images?
Theoretically it should be possible: http://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/attrs.html#d:image
Curious does your implementation of DOT support embedding of images?
Theoretically it should be possible: http://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/attrs.html#d:image
Bravo. Very cool leveraging services this way, I like your idea of architecting to optimize free tier svcs.
Cool stuff! Inspiring :)
I use Netlify’s free tier to host static sites.
I don’t do anything with the services but hopefully this can inspire:
https://free-for.dev/#/
https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev
https://free-for.dev/#/
https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev
My personal website[1] is hosted free on Github Pages (built with Eleventy).
[1]: https://www.justus.ws/
[1]: https://www.justus.ws/
The MetaMask Chrome extension doesn't let me visit your site because it seems to be listed on a list concerning "Ethereum Phishing Detection".
Haven't seen this before, just thought to let you know.
Thanks for the heads up—false positive. I submitted an issue with MetaMask to have it removed.
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I like vercel a lot, does the same thing as Netlify. Also using Supabase and Feta for some other projects!
r614.dev
r614.dev
Feta?
I run a paid Chrome extension (with a free tier!) that audits websites for best practices:
https://www.checkbot.io/
It uses:
- Netlify's free tier for the homepage + Netlify CMS (free) for content editing
- Firebase within the free limits for cloud functions, storage + user authentication
- The free tier of Crisp web chat for support
- The Chrome store which hosts the extension for free ($5 sign up fee)
- Paddle for payments. They take a % of each transaction but they don't have a sign up fee or ongoing fees.
https://www.checkbot.io/
It uses:
- Netlify's free tier for the homepage + Netlify CMS (free) for content editing
- Firebase within the free limits for cloud functions, storage + user authentication
- The free tier of Crisp web chat for support
- The Chrome store which hosts the extension for free ($5 sign up fee)
- Paddle for payments. They take a % of each transaction but they don't have a sign up fee or ongoing fees.
Just downloaded and I'm seriously impressed! Thanks for maintaining the extension, can see myself using it for years to come.
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a customizable feed of indie label new releases: https://dill.vercel.app
I run a free GCP micro VPS and also a free Oracle Cloud VPS. I find it useful for running very low volume web app experiments and for light coding from portable devices (good Mosh+Emacs+tmux setups possible for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices).
Also, I use Leanpub to write my books [1], which is free to use (and they pay good royalties). A recent hack: I used to supply free downloads for my eBooks on https://markwatson.com (which I run on a free VPS) but then realized that by setting the minimum price for my Leanpub books to $0.00, I didn't even have to do that. About 50 people download a free book for everyone who chooses to pay, so I hope Leanpub is not losing money on me (they are nice people).
[1] https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson
Also, I use Leanpub to write my books [1], which is free to use (and they pay good royalties). A recent hack: I used to supply free downloads for my eBooks on https://markwatson.com (which I run on a free VPS) but then realized that by setting the minimum price for my Leanpub books to $0.00, I didn't even have to do that. About 50 people download a free book for everyone who chooses to pay, so I hope Leanpub is not losing money on me (they are nice people).
[1] https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson
I run my matrix homeserver and ssh proxy for stuff hosted at home on Oracle free. They also offer ARM vms now.
Don't know if this qualifies as cool but I built a single purpose site to list IMDb ratings of all episodes of a TV show in a grid, which runs on GitHub Pages. It doesn't use any external APIs.
https://theshowgrid.com
I built it mainly for personal use. I know IMDb ratings aren't perfect but it's a decent measure of mass opinion.
https://theshowgrid.com
I built it mainly for personal use. I know IMDb ratings aren't perfect but it's a decent measure of mass opinion.
I like the simplicity, nicely done. On the homepage there is a giant empty spot on the right, not sure if that was intentional or something isn't loading. If there's nothing there now, maybe a screenshot of a sample show would be a nice way to introduce it.
Thanks mate. You're right, on big screens (< 5% of users) the empty spot is a bit of a concern. I'll try to add a gif of a demo. Honestly, this was a build, automate and forget type of weekend project. So I forced myself to stop adding features but can certainly find some time to improve it a bit.
I saw the network tab while searching, and no API calls were made for searching. If possible can you elaborate on how you made the search like this possible?
Also loved the minimalist design and also how you can see your recently searched terms at the bottom.
Also loved the minimalist design and also how you can see your recently searched terms at the bottom.
Thanks mate. I wanted to build a no nonsense site and think I've achieved my goals for the time allotted for a weekend project.
The architecture is dead simple. Multiple times a week IMDb publishes bare bones datasets. I've a bash script to download them, format and load into MySQL from which I export two types of json files:
1) a file with all the TV shows names, id, ratings etc (shows.json) - this is what's used for search. It weighs 2MB compressed and I could certainly optimize but considering the low traffic I've stashed it for later time.
2) A file for every tv show with all the ratings and votes for its episodes. Based on your search, the specific file will be fetched to display ratings. This one file per show could also be optimized but looks premature at this stage.
You can see them here: https://github.com/dvnlgls/theshowgrid/tree/gh-pages/assets
Strictly speaking, a database is also not necessary but it serves 2 purposes: 1) I could query easily to satisfy some curious show related questions. 2) The datasets include a ton of stale data (like shows w/o episodes and vice versa), so I find it easier to cleanup through SQL.
The architecture is dead simple. Multiple times a week IMDb publishes bare bones datasets. I've a bash script to download them, format and load into MySQL from which I export two types of json files:
1) a file with all the TV shows names, id, ratings etc (shows.json) - this is what's used for search. It weighs 2MB compressed and I could certainly optimize but considering the low traffic I've stashed it for later time.
2) A file for every tv show with all the ratings and votes for its episodes. Based on your search, the specific file will be fetched to display ratings. This one file per show could also be optimized but looks premature at this stage.
You can see them here: https://github.com/dvnlgls/theshowgrid/tree/gh-pages/assets
Strictly speaking, a database is also not necessary but it serves 2 purposes: 1) I could query easily to satisfy some curious show related questions. 2) The datasets include a ton of stale data (like shows w/o episodes and vice versa), so I find it easier to cleanup through SQL.
My network tab shows that a shows.json file gets downloaded upon site load so it should be able to search within memory.
imdb.com/interfaces/ maybe.
Super-cool, thank you! How else could I so quickly learn which e.g. South Park episodes to watch?!
Thank you. That's precisely why I built this. Yesterday I wanted to catch up on Season 3 of Grand Tour and guess which site I went to see what to watch!
awesome work! makes it easier to figure out what to watch first in a new series, and even if it's worth watching.
I also appreciate the snapiness due to not using external APIs.
I also appreciate the snapiness due to not using external APIs.
Thanks for the kind words. The use case you mentioned is the primary motivator for the site. That's especially useful for shows you want to revisit or new ones where sequential viewing isn't necessary (like Top Gear etc.)
wow, this site is great. Thank you. Bookmarked! (simpsons season 2-9 really was the best, but until season 15 it was still "ok i guess")
Thanks mate! Interestingly,The Simpsons was the show that sort of inspired me to build this site. I saw an image on reddit showing all the Simpsons episode ratings and thought it would be a fun idea to build a website based on the concept.
Clever. Nice work.
Would you also add the average score per season ?
Would you also add the average score per season ?
Thanks. That shouldn't be difficult to implement. Added to the todo.
I run https://ranked.vote on Netlify’s free tier.
https://notify.run on DynamoDB’s free tier (and originally Lambda’s, but I outgrew that and it became cheaper to use a low-end Digital Ocean box)
https://treeverse.app uses Lambda/S3/Netlify on either free or pennies-per-month tier.
https://notify.run on DynamoDB’s free tier (and originally Lambda’s, but I outgrew that and it became cheaper to use a low-end Digital Ocean box)
https://treeverse.app uses Lambda/S3/Netlify on either free or pennies-per-month tier.
I have a small mailing list for a few selected friends running on heroku (hosting a small website and then using the scheduler plugin to fire emails) + sendgrid free tier.
I also have a dynamic website using a python CMS running on free heroku which the admin uses to update the website. An heroku scheduler run a netlify job every 6 hours which download the dynamic website and publishes it as a static website.
I also have a dynamic website using a python CMS running on free heroku which the admin uses to update the website. An heroku scheduler run a netlify job every 6 hours which download the dynamic website and publishes it as a static website.