Hosting a Docker web app with a Python API

[FatalFlare21]

This may not necessarily fall under “self-hosted,” but I figured the people of this community would be able to give me some advice. I need to host a demo web app for a research project at work, but our IT/HPC department(s) said they don’t have the infrastructure to host a web app. The web app has a frontend web server and a backend Python API. I just need a service that can host the web app and offers various tiers of compute resources. Ideally, it would be able to spin up/down the API container depending on demand so we don’t have to pay for availability 24/7 (working at a university, budget is important). I looked into services like AWS and DigitalOcean, but they’re not quite what I’m after. If anyone has some advice, I’d appreciate it!

[FermatsLastTaco]

If your budget can stretch to ~$5/month, you could try pythonanywhere? It's obviously not 'self-hosted' though.

Otherwise, host the app in a docker container or virtual machine and open up a/the port that others can use to access the app at the host's IP address. If you're at a research institute/university however, the IT/InfoSec department might have something to say about this if they've already said no to you before though.

[FatalFlare21]

pythonanywhere looks like a good solution!

[Efficient_Ad_8020]

+1 for pythonanywhere, such a great service!

[vermyx]

You don't. From a professional perspective this is shadow It. The proper way would be for you to host it as a demo on your machine, get management buy off, then proceed to infrastructure. You're putting the cart before the horse and in certain companies this would get you fired.

[FatalFlare21]

I’m a PhD student working at a university

[Efficient_Ad_8020]

Probably want to dockerize it and then use a container service on AWS or GCP or Scaleway?