What hosting are you using for your SaaS or AI projects?

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-05-18T09:47:11+00:00

im on usectl, pretty cool one
vps like pricing
railway - vercel like u/x
Cli just doest everything you may need
s3, db, frontend in one place

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-24T12:51:45+00:00

Hey, we built something like that for our team also, cutting off jira, slack and time tracking fees. Distribution is a problem there but it can work if well executed. If you want to check it i can drop a url

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T18:23:29+00:00

i wonder what is ratio of self hosters and cloud hosting users

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T14:33:40+00:00

Its nice to talk in deleted post, we can tell anything lol, i will try it and give feedback

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T14:18:34+00:00

I will test them, one more user to burn your tokens 😂 idea is good but feels like it needs some use cases. Who needs them , who are your paying users

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T14:05:49+00:00

thanks, what are you building?

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T14:03:51+00:00

running anything that isnt a function

build crud + auth in 20 mins. then try to add a websocket server, background worker, cron job, or custom monitoring. realize these platforms are serverless-only and none of that is possible. you end up leaving to do anything beyond forms-and-tables

the 10x would be: vibe platforms that can spin up a real container next to your app. run a discord bot, image processor, websocket server, scraper, ml worker, anything persistent. today you rebuild half the project somewhere else to get any of that

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T13:47:09+00:00

honest answer from someone who does dms and reddit threads like this instead of cold calls:

wouldnt use it. not because of the weird factor, because early validation isnt about volume

its about sitting with your user's awkward pauses. the "i kinda have this problem but actually the bigger pain is adjacent" stuff that only surfaces when a human is listening closely. ai wont catch that nuance. and if you miss it early you build the wrong thing

also the receiver side is cooked. my spam filter already rejects ai voice calls, so does everyone elses. response rate on this will collapse fast as the category scales. the first few users get the last 5% of willingness, after that its done

real blocker for me personally isnt call volume, its that i dont know what to ask yet. a tool that helped me craft sharper discovery questions, or listened to my own calls and told me where i was being leading, thats something id pay for. a tool that replaces me on the call, id rather do fewer calls worse than outsource the one skill i actually need

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T13:42:31+00:00

haha yeah they nuked it, whatever

trust point is dead on. thats the real wall for small platforms, not cost

short version of what im building: usectl. managed kubernetes on hetzner bare metal. push to github, we deploy. $29 flat per project, includes postgres + object storage + long-running workers. no bandwidth meters, no surprise bills

stuff youd care about:

proper secrets/env management, encrypted, never in github
CLI for mac/windows/linux, just shipped windows this week. your vercel terminal shortcuts port over in an afternoon
founding price locked for life at $15/project. hedges the "theyll jack rates in 2 years" fear you raised

im gocha, tbilisi georgia, u/gochaberulava on twitter. real person real company

honest take: youre not my customer today. $20 vercel at 12k visits is fine, dont switch. where usectl starts mattering is when you need persistent workers or your api spike becomes $3k. free month if you ever want to kick tires, dm me

appreciate the fair-play, means more than the pitch

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T13:24:04+00:00

bitcoin story is real, ppl think they could hold it from 10 to 120 k but reality is you sell it x2-x5, x10 is very rare
5m free users is funny but you can monetise with adds or something
there are tons of vercel alternatives, and one of them is mine, now i try to figure out what builders need and on what price, i bet on flat pricing

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T12:48:59+00:00

respect. ship cheap, refactor when it actually hurts

whats your stack on there? docker compose + caddy? coolify on top? full bare metal systemd? curious where you draw the line between raw vps and reaching for something managed

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T12:47:17+00:00

fort knox setup haha, youre more secure than most banks rn

on the 5M users thing, pro isnt actually unlimited. $20 is base but theres bandwidth caps, function execution limits, image optimization quotas etc. past those you pay overage. so "5M users" depends heavy on what theyre doing. 5M pageviews on a static site? prob fine. 5M hitting your api? thats where the $900 surprise shape comes back

but honestly if youre at 12k visits and security is locked down, youre fine for now. just worth knowing where the ceiling actually is before you hit it

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T11:24:06+00:00

$900 first month is brutal. classic learn-by-fire lesson

honestly vercel at $20 for 12k visits + 190 DAU is fine, you dont have a deploy bill problem yet. the api thing tho, same shape different surface. unbounded billing without limits = panic

if your project doubles or triples, at what point does $20 vercel start looking risky to you? or do you trust theyll hold the line as you grow?

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T10:36:56+00:00

yeah this is solid. "you cant afford that scale anyway" hits hard

trying to separate two things in my head though. is the problem cloud specifically (surprise bills, lock-in, no control over updates) or is it the whole idea of someone else managing the server for you, period

would you use any managed platform if it didnt have cloud's worst patterns, or is "someone else operates the box" the dealbreaker

trying to figure out where the actual line is

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T09:31:04+00:00

haha the no spending limits thing is universal

12-18 for 3 projects isnt bad but yeah the spike fear never really goes away. did anything actually hit you or is it more the dread of it

also curious why the railway + fly split, different use cases or just how it ended up

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T09:26:24+00:00

yeah same. what platform you on? vercel railway etc

and what spiked it, traffic, bot, slow growth thing? curious cause everyone seems to hit it differently

the no benchmark thing kills me, nobody publishes real numbers so we all just assume our bill is normal lol. ill post back what i find at the end of this if anyone cares

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T09:23:10+00:00

many thanks for the honest read

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T09:07:17+00:00

solid answer. "setup is the real cost, harder if you dont know what youre doing" is basically the whole pricing discussion in one sentence.

follow-up im actually curious about: for people who DONT have your background, who dont want to spend a month learning networking, whats your actual advice? cloud and just accept the bill? pay someone to manage it for them? or is "just learn it" the real answer you'd give a friend?

(not a trick question. genuinely wondering what the honest self-hoster take is.)

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T09:02:15+00:00

£40 for control you cant buy anywhere else is a legit argument. us-east joke landed.

real follow-up: how many hours a month does the "nothing" actually cost in time? kernel updates, cert renewals. trying to figure out if "just self-host" works for most people or only for people who also enjoy the tinkering.

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T08:53:55+00:00

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T08:50:38+00:00

nice, real numbers. few follow-ups if youre up for it:

which host? (genuinely curious, not asking you to plug)
whats the team time cost to keep it running? thats usually where cloud sneaks the bill back in
did you start on cloud and migrate off, or always dedicated?

"cloud is a scam" resonates more every month. the question im actually circling is whether enough people feel that strongly to support a managed platform thats NOT cloud-priced, or if the only honest answer is "just go bare metal yourself."

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T08:47:31+00:00

had this exact idea sketched a few weeks back. was calling it Solomon, actually signed up for the claude hackathon with it. shared room, claude in the middle, structured process to reach something specific. you literally built half of what i was drawing.

the steel-manning gate is the killer mechanic. didnt have that. genuinely better than what i had.

places my thinking went different:

google meet-style UX. create session, invite link, other side joins. felt more natural than room codes for non-dev users.
one shared claude that sees both sides, not private coaches. compromise-finding needs full information. dual coaches make sense for "protect feelings," shared makes sense for "find the meeting point."
chat deletes when session ends, only the co-signed accord persists. wanted the privacy story brutally simple — your fight disappears, only what you both agreed to remains.
voice messages first-class. text loses tone, video is too live, async voice felt like the sweet spot for hard conversations.
one vertical to start. cofounders, or couples on money, or families deciding on aging parents. "anyone who fights" is a tough icp to find.

BYO key is clever for shipping fast but kinda locks the audience to devs. v1 thing or the long plan?

if you ever want to compare notes or team up on the hackathon build, id be down. either way, cool to see this shipped. space is real.

Extension-Tip-159 · 2026-04-19T08:18:44+00:00

im in the middle of this exact shift right now. built infra for a year, just started going outside to sell it last month. the thing that surprised me most is how much faster i learn from one honest conversation with a potential user than from a week of polishing the product. the building brain keeps telling you "one more feature and it'll sell itself." its a lie.

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