Ask HN: Anyone had success getting non-technical users install server software?
4 comments
If you have customers with servers, then surely (hopefully) someone remotely technical manages them but I've found that technical expertise varies greatly and in my experience not many customers have interest in taking on the install/maintenance of said software.
You basically need something as easy to install (and update) as Google Chrome or you have to do the install and maintenance yourself (trust me on this, it's a huge time suck and customers can have all kinds of weird setups).
My "favorite" memory was a customer who ignored our request for a dedicated VM to install our web software onto. They neglected to tell us that this system already had a service running that used port 80/443 and somehow we were able to get through our install and take over that port without breaking the application but one day the server rebooted and our app got the ports before the other app. What was that app? It was their access control software that let people enter the building... whoops!
You basically need something as easy to install (and update) as Google Chrome or you have to do the install and maintenance yourself (trust me on this, it's a huge time suck and customers can have all kinds of weird setups).
My "favorite" memory was a customer who ignored our request for a dedicated VM to install our web software onto. They neglected to tell us that this system already had a service running that used port 80/443 and somehow we were able to get through our install and take over that port without breaking the application but one day the server rebooted and our app got the ports before the other app. What was that app? It was their access control software that let people enter the building... whoops!
If the service has enough value to support it, the deliverable could be a physical server preconfigured so all the customer needs to do is plug it in and turn it on. Hardware can be a useful abstraction.
One reason this isn't common is that you can make good revenue from charging for hosting, and it's relatively little work -- less work than supporting end-users installing it wrong on 100 different OS versions.
How about setting up an AMI for AWS and similar way for other platforms, with a bit of automation baked in?
I've asked this question before and the answer is always (and depressingly) a resounding 'no': there is no easy and simple way for non-technical users to successfully install your web app software on a server.
Time moves on and I'm hoping things have changed. Does someone have a successful tale to share?
And just to pre-empt the suggestions that Docker, Cloudtron, Sandstorm, command-line scripts are possible options: none of these are easy or simple for non-technical users. Even one-click app marketplaces (Linode, Digital Ocean etc) have their complications.
If you're a developer who doesn't want to provide a SaaS service (or wants to provide a self-hosting solution in addition to a SaaS one), a simple installation process for your customers should be a big win. But the complicated process of server install makes this difficult to impossible.
It's a bit depressing that we still don't have a simple, easy way to install web apps on a server. Without easy deployment for non-technical users, self-hosting will never be a viable option for most people, only for a tiny minority of technical users. Agree or disagree?