engine VS Dokku

Qovery: Qovery simplifies the deployment process for Kubernetes by letting you declare your project's structure and dependencies, making it an excellent choice for startups looking to focus on development without worrying about infrastructure.

Enter Qovery - an Internal Developer Platform that can be installed on any Kubernetes cluster to bring a delightful and simplified developer experience. But don't take my word for granted. In this quick step-by-step article, I will show you how to deploy one of my GitHub apps and a Postgres database on my Kubernetes cluster running on GCP. And what's really really cool is that I don't even need to understand how Kubernetes work!

Qovery is a comprehensive PaaS tool that offers a range of features to simplify the deployment and management of applications. With Qovery, you can easily deploy your applications in various cloud environments, eliminating the complexities of infrastructure setup. Its intuitive and developer-friendly interface, Git integration, and automatic scaling capabilities make it a powerful choice for building a custom PaaS. Qovery's seamless integration with popular frameworks and databases further enhances its appeal.

Qovery https://www.qovery.com

I have one of my customers who want to use Qovery to deploy their apps on AWS China. Technically speaking, Qovery runs on Kubernetes and on all the usual AWS regions. But AWS China (Beijing) is a bit different (cf here)

Combining GitLab (CI) with Qovery (CD) sounds what you need.

I am eager to get your feedback on Qovery - an open-source CD platform that helps thousands of developers and DevOps to build and scale on AWS.

Qovery - an open-source platform that makes AWS easier and there is a Terraform provider available

I run all my projects on Dokku. It’s a sweet spot for me between a barebones VPS with Docker Compose and something a lot more complicated like k8s. Dokku comes with a bunch of solid plugins for databases that handle backups and such. Zero downtime deploys, TLS cert management, reverse proxies, all out of the box. It’s simple enough to understand in a weekend and has been quietly maintained for many years. The only downside is it’s meant mostly for single server deployments, but I’ve never needed another server so far.

https://dokku.com/

Yeah there are a bunch of selfhostable things:

Caprover (https://caprover.com/)

Dokku (https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

But people still choose Netlify and Vercel for ease of use I think.

Maybe we need something that's just Netlify. The closest I've seen to the "right" UX is Ness:

https://ness.sh

The modern iteration of these tools has taken the developer experience learnings from the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, and will bring them to your own VM, giving you your own personal PaaS. Example of this include Dokku, Coolify, Caprover, Cloud66 and many more!

Based on the fact that your ideal is to have a similar experience to heroku than managing your own server setting up reverse proxies take a look at these options:

1) https://dokku.com - lets you turn your light sail instance basically into heroku

2) https://render.com

3) https://fly.io

4) If you have aws credits this is their heroku equivalent: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk

above is not what I do but would be the options I would pursue if I understand your preference and requirement correctly.

All in all, I really recommend trying out Dokku if you are a developer interested in hosting your own projects. It makes it super easy to get everything you need to get up and running without having to worry about the specifics. And the price is impossible to beat!

The installation instructions are on the frontpage of our site. Thats basically all you need to do to install Dokku. As far as using it, we have a simplified tutorial here.

Dokku is a lightweight and open-source PaaS platform that simplifies application deployment by leveraging Docker. With Dokku, developers can easily push their applications using Git, allowing Dokku to build and run them in isolated containers. Its CLI-only approach and plugin architecture make it highly extensible. Dokku's modular plugins enable features like database integration, Let's Encrypt SSL certificates, and automated Slack notifications, giving developers flexibility and control over their PaaS environment.

Also https://dokku.com/