Choosing a hosting platform

There are numerous hosting and deployment services available online that can run your app from. Below is a comparative list of the most typically used at dOrg:

Netlify

Best for:

  • Front end/React applications

Pros:

  • Very fast/easy configuration for hosting and DNS
  • Free SSL
  • Automatic deployment of PRs on staging site without needing a CI/CD
  • Automated deployments without needing a CI/CD
  • Serverless functions

Cons:

  • Doesn't have Docker support
  • Doesn't support Database management (except for their own FaunaDB)

Beware:

Heroku

Best for:

  • Dockerized applications
  • Database hosting

Pros:

  • Very fast/easy configuration for hosting and DNS
  • Docker support
  • Automated deployments, even with Docker, without needing a CI/CD
  • Database management

Cons:

  • Its free tier "sleeps" when idle. That means that your hosted application will have downtime, don't use this plan on production
  • No serverless functions
  • No automated PR deployment

Beware:

Vercel

https://vercel.com/

Best for:

  • NextJS applications

Pros:

  • Very fast/easy configuration for hosting and DNS
  • Out of the box support for NextJS
  • Automatic deployment of PRs on staging site without needing a CI/CD
  • Automated deployments without needing a CI/CD
  • Serverless functions

Cons:

  • No docker or database support

AWS

Best for:

  • Application with multiple docker files, or with docker-compose
  • A very custom infrastructure is needed (multiple dbs, or apis)

Pros:

  • No limits, can set up any services you want

Cons:

  • It is not really easy to use so you need to educate yourself in order to use it
  • Paid service
  • You need to manually configure CI with Github Actions or any other CI/CD pipeline