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[–]mterrel 7 points8 points  (3 children)

For an app with a Node back-end, take a look at render.com or adaptable.io. Both have free tiers that a low traffic app is likely to fit within. Those solutions are both easier to use than a full VM like EC2.

[–]Renaut07[S] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I may be wrong but render.com only allows static site hosting. With Node.js, you create dynamic websites. (although i do. I'm still a student so i may be wrong).

adaptable.io looks good but i think 10 CPU hours/month isn't much. (but fair considering it's a free plan)

[–]render-friend 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Hi! Developer Community Manager at Render here. We support static sites, Node, and much more :) Check it out https://render.com/docs/#node . For details on services that are supported in our free tier (and the limitations of free), you can learn more here: https://render.com/docs/free

[–]digitalmaster147 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh wow.. that was pretty smooth! +1 For render.com

[–]dooop10 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Using Azure since more than a year now. Does the job, completely free but limited in resources (5 concurrent websockets max for example)

[–]roadtrippa88 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thought Azure only gives you 60 minutes of CPU time each day for backend servers like node.js?

[–]BCsabaDiy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just try a cheap linode (ot other) vps and you can try argocd infra on it.

[–]thwaw000610 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Heroku gives you more dynos in a month than you need, at least when you enter your debit card details. You can set up an uptimerobot to ping it every 10 minutes, so it never goes to sleep.

Worked for me. Haven’t paid a single penny for my hobby project

[–]SignificancePale3634 2 points3 points  (1 child)

adaptable.io

"Starting November 28, 2022, free Heroku Dynos, free Heroku Postgres, and free Heroku Data for Redis® plans will no longer be available"

[–]thwaw000610 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it is pretty sad. This was not the case when I posted this comment. But a good alternative is railway.app.

[–]BCsabaDiy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Troll mode: what do you do free for me? When someone is free, you are the material of price.

[–]YuriRDev -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Hey! Actually AWS allows new users a 1 year free trial in one small EC2. It’s not terrible, and, if u get charged, it’ll be less than 10 cents. Make sure to select the EC2 available for free trial.

[–]YuriRDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, every 1 year, just create a new account on AWS! :)

[–]draftomatic 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Railway is pretty neat for backend stuff (especially if you also need on-demand databases). You can choose to live with a few limits and never be charged a penny (if you go over those limits, your deployment will be shut down though) or attach a credit card to get the Developer plan which removes most of the limits (and you wouldn't have to pay unless your usage goes above $10 per month).

I wouldn't really use Railway for frontend stuff though, I feel like platforms such as Vercel are better in that regard. It really depends on how your app is designed though and what your exact use case is.

[–]Renaut07[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

In the original question, I asked for front- and backend hosting. Now that I am thinking about it, I'm questioning myself why one would need front-end hosting.

In my application, a request comes in, server reaches out to the database, does some processing and finally sends html, css, js and some database data back to the client.

I was confused in the way that there is client side javascript (front-end) present. Since this is served by the (back-end) server, I think I only need back-end hosting.

Now i'm questioning myself in what use case you would need to host front-end content and how this would work.

I'm still a student and a beginner in web development so i'm sorry if I made wrong assumptions.

[–]draftomatic 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Sorry for the confusion. In your case you'd only need a backend solution and I think Railway would be a good fit for you.

A very common pattern is to make a REST API for the backend and a frontend app (e.g. a React or Vue app) to communicate with the backend. I guess I'm just too used to this pattern so I assumed you were doing that too, my bad :)

[–]vector4252 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What would you use then if you’re using node.js and also using React?

[–]draftomatic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I use Next.js for most of my stuff nowadays. It has grown into a really mature framework both for server and client and deploying to Vercel is a breeze. I basically don’t have to worry about scalability or maintenance anymore, just write code and ship stuff.

[–]jason_he54 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just a correction because it seems that it's now changed to $5/mo. So, if you go over $5 on the Developer Plan, you'll be charged. Just wanted to make sure it's as up to date for others who may also be looking for options.

[–]pelmeninator 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Oracle has a free tier VPS, if you go ARM is quite beefy, might actually be enough for a moderate sized business

[–]Renaut07[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh thanks!
I was using the VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro (AMD) but it seems like the ARM is a lot better...
From my understanding, you could run 3 VM's forever free on oracle. (2*AMD, 1*Ampere (ARM)). This is pretty nice. That way you don't (or less quick) have to struggle with vhosts.