bref VS Dokku

I have just released the first working version of a symfony starter project using bref.sh.

As you can see on the website (https://bref.sh/) there's 13 billion monthly AWS Lambda invocations using Bref (PHP).

I have a PHP application (running on Amazon Linux via Bref on Lambda) which has been signing Apple passbooks no problem. I've trying to do various upgrades which includes moving to AWS Linux 2023 which uses OpenSSL 3.

Your best bet is to post an issue on https://github.com/brefphp/bref

multi threading php isnt a burden. laravel with a supervisor + redis + queues works out-of-the-box. you can even run it on lambda (vapor or bref.sh) with almost no hassle.

To generate resource on AWS, you can use aws-sdk into a lambda. While Node or Python is more widely used, you can use PHP bref.sh and the PHP AWS SDK to achieve the same outcome. You'll want to use serverless framework (https://www.serverless.com) .

If you’re deploying in AWS and depending on your app I’d highly recommend using https://bref.sh/. When we changed it made our deploy pipeline so much simpler and our AWS bill much cheaper. Plus infrastructure as code is so useful (we don’t have dedicated dev ops in a team of about 20). Things like adding GD, upgrading PHP, or even adding a redis server become 1 (or a few) lines of change which you can PR and test on staging just like other code changes.

For Lambda, look into https://bref.sh/. For us, running on Lambda was always way cheaper than everything else. However, if you have massive scale that calculation may not hold up.

There's a lot to unpack here from your question. First off, PHP on Lambda WITHOUT docker is possible. Check out https://bref.sh. It works by providing PHP on Lambda like any other runtime. It also provides a Web Hosting experience for PHP on Lambda for those that want to run PHP-FPM.

Failing that, looks like Bref will be the option in place of Vapor.

Would be great to see a comparison to some better known alternatives like

- Dokku [0]

- CapRover [1]

[0] https://dokku.com/

[1] https://caprover.com/

If you want to dig into it anyways, Dokku is an interesting mention. They provide an Open Source PaaS that you can install on your server to simplify self hosting containers.

When I came across Coolify, I thought of giving it a try. I am aware of Dokku, but I never really tried it because it doesn't have a UI. I work primarily as a UI developer, so having a nice UI to work with is a plus for me.

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.