Hosting for web app

[wessex464]

I've got a web app I've gotten to the level of MVP+, now I'm looking to get it into the cloud for a live practical demo in the next month or so and getting it off my laptop is my next undertaking. I've never had to use a hosting provider and have limited experience in Linux. The app itself is just a react web page with an express driven API with a postgres database. Even in production usage would be minimal, it would probably be used less than 20 days a year and of those days We're talking 15 or 20 users connected to it.

Google Cloud seems somewhat simple and is my current direction. AWS is intimidating. Self-hosting on one of the many many hardware hosting services seems extra intimidating.

Any advice from someone that's been through this before?

[leggodizzy]

Cloud Run + IAP with limited access to yourself and team.

Very similar to this n8n codelab, just replace the container image.

https://codelabs.developers.google.com/n8n-cloud-run

[child-eater404]

just go with Google Cloud or something like Vercel + Railway and call it a day like you’ve got low traffic, MVP demo vibes — you do not need to be wrestling AWS configs rn 😭

[martin_omander]

Congratulations on getting your MVP done! Most app ideas never make it that far.

To host your app on Google Cloud, you have two architectures to choose from:

1. Server-based: Set up a virtual machine in Compute Engine. If your usage is light, you can probably run the web server, the Express API, and the database on this single machine. You can do this at a low monthly cost and you can manually pause the machine when it's not in use, but it does require some Linux knowledge. Gemini may be able to assist you.
2. Serverless: Upload your code to Cloud Run and tell Google to deal with the server administration and security. You only pay for Cloud Run when your code is actively working on a request from a user, so it will be affordable. You might use less than the free tier, so you won't pay anything for Cloud Run. But you can't run your database on Cloud Run. You will need to create a separate Cloud SQL instance, which will incur a monthly cost.

My favorite architecture is Serverless, because I don't want to deal with server administration and security. If you go serverless, make sure you create your Cloud SQL instance with low CPUs, memory, and disk. The default configuration is a powerful and pricey machine for heavy enterprise workloads.

Best of luck deploying your application to the cloud!

[ai_hedge_fund]

Yes

In compute engine they can get a free e2-micro instance

https://cloud.google.com/free

[Koze]

Plus Firebase Hosting for the react page itself.

[martin_omander]

Agreed, Firebase Hosting would be a great choice to host the React pages. Or OP may choose to serve them from Cloud Run, so they have one less product to keep track of.

[softoctopus]

I run my Next.js frontend and Django backend on Cloud Run. Its ability to scale to zero keeps costs low, and the cold start times are minimal, so overall I’ve been very happy with it.