billabear VS self-hosted

> Anecdotally, we've seen a number of larger "open-source alternative to X" projects posted on HN of late that are technically self-deployable, but require so much up-front knowledge that it's not actually accessible to those who might truly be liberated by such software.

Any self-hosted application really needs someone technical unless you're providing something like the DigitalOcean deploy button.

Docker-compose requires technical knowledge to run locally. Sure running "docker compose" is easy but installing it often isn't. As someone quite technical I'm honestly not sure how that would work for deploying on to AWS or GCP even though I know it's possible. I would have to look into it.

Ansible scripts require technical knowledge. Again running the command is easy but installing ansible isn't.

How DigitalOcean's deploy button is really easy as is shown in my demo video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbInyGtqLCs&t=1s. Note there is 10 minutes of my app demo inbetween starting the process and me using a deployed version. You can even try it out at https://github.com/BillaBear/billabear it's literally super easy. It's also silly easy to actually build. "DigitalOcean's app platform is so good it makes BillaBear looks good since the deployment is so easy" is literally what I've said to people.

A bit of context so people can understand. I have a subscription management and billing system, it's self-hostable and I provide a managed hosted version too. The license cost is 2,000 GBP using the JetBrains license model with upgrade licenses dropping down to 1,500 GBP. There is technically a lifetime deal (all versions and upgrades) for the next week or so for 500 GBP but I'm not wanting to tell outreach prospects about that it's more of a hidden thing and something I talk about with inbound (because they are normally inbound because they saw the deal and want more info) more context if it helps is billabear.com and github.com/billabear/billabear.

Startup Name / URL BillaBear / www.billabear.com Location of Your Headquarters Berlin, Germany Elevator Pitch/Explainer Video Source-available SaaS Subscription Management and Billing system - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbInyGtqLCs More details: https://github.com/billabear/billabear What life cycle stage is your startup at? Validation Your role? Founder What goals are you trying to reach this month? Get more customers How could r/startups help? Check it out, maybe give a GitHub star and reach out if you need help improving your billing. Discount for r/startups subscribers? Sure email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) mentioning this and I'll give you a lifetime deal for 500 GBP.

It's source-available and can be found at https://github.com/billabear/billabear.

I was responding to the One of the Sentry inconvenience is self-hosting: it relies on so many services it can be very complicated to maintain part, and also reminding readers that if they, too, hate companies that rug-pull their open source licenses, there is a band-aid for both parts

Compare https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted/blob/9.1.2/docker-c... with https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted/blob/24.4.2/docker-... for what life used to be like for running Sentry on-prem. It was awesome

It would take a ton of work to dig up the actual memory and CPU requirements of each one, but rest assured they're not zero, so every one of those services eats ram and requires TLC when, not if, they shit themselves. So, more parts == more headaches with all other things being equal

Then, I deeply appreciate that there are a whole spectrum of reactions to the various licensing schemes in use nowadays, and a bunch of folks don't care. I care, though, because I have gotten immense value from open source projects, and have contributed changes back to quite a few. It has been my life experience that any of those "source available" licenses usually are very hostile toward making local builds and if I can't build it to match how prod goes, then I can't test my fixes in my environment and then I can't contribute the PR with any faith

This is the point where I will point out that you can self-host Sentry free of charge :) https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/

Sentry can be self hosted: https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/

The people we're concerned about are not the hundreds of thousands of Sentry users, including those that self-host.

We're concerned about people who have taken the software for the purposes of competing directly against us, that hinders our ability to monetize the work. Monetizing the work helps us continue improving the software and distribute it for free use, benefitting those aforementioned real users (e.g. https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted).

> I mean no slander or disrespect to anyone involved, but there was a DataDog alternative posted sometime in the last few weeks that had a docker-compose with like 15 containers in it.

Reminds me of Sentry: https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/

This is their example docker-compose for self-hosting: https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted/blob/master/docker-...

It has:

  - exim4 (smtp)

> What should people use?

I recall Apache Skywalking being pretty good, especially for smaller/medium scale projects: https://skywalking.apache.org/

The architecture is simple, the performance is adequate, it doesn't make you spend days configuring it and it even supports various different data stores: https://skywalking.apache.org/docs/main/v9.0.0/en/setup/back...

The problems with it are that it isn't super popular (although has agents for most popular stacks), the docs could be slightly better and I recall them also working on a new UI so there is a little bit of churn: https://skywalking.apache.org/downloads/

Still better versus some of the other options when you need something that just works instead of spending a lot of time configuring something (even when that something might be superior in regards to the features): https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted/blob/master/docker-...

Sentry is just the first thing that comes to mind (OpenTelemetry also isn't simpler due to how much it tries to do), but compare its complexity to Skywalking: https://github.com/apache/skywalking/blob/master/docker/dock...

I wish there was more self-hosted software like that out there, enough to address certain concerns in a simple way on day 1 and leave branching out to more complex options like OpenTelemetry once you have a separate team for that and the cash is rolling in.

Sounds interesting!

Will you compare with qryn? Self-hosted sentry?

qryn.metrico.in/

https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/

I haven't done it in years, but technically sentry is able to be self hosted https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted