I moved a 1M monthly visitors project from Heroku to Render in December, and other than a few little hiccups, I have a better service (no hard-cap on memory for ex) for less than half the price.
I thought I was happy with Heroku until realizing the absurd cost and lack of evolution it grew to be. I've been there for almost a decade.
I wasn't at quite this scale (yet) on Heroku, but I operate a service with quite a few moving parts, and I was deeply concerned about what an increase of scale would mean for my costs on Heroku. I moved to Render, kept my monthly opex essentially flat, and dramatically scaled up the available compute resources for my users just my biggest customer's needs really skyrocketed.
I'm glad I switched when I did, because I think I'd probably have a $600+/month bill from Heroku right now.
Edit, couple more thoughts about Render:
I've been using Render's managed Redis offering for the past few months in beta, and it's been rock-solid. I'm really happy with it.
Also, I am delighted that Render's two United States datacenters are in Oregon and Ohio. My understanding is that they spread their customers across GCP, Azure, and AWS, and I could not be happier to be out of Heroku with its exposure to the tire fire that is AWS us-east-1.
Well Heroku is overpriced garbage so that's not surprising. They rely on lock in to keep you stuck paying egregious fees for services that are relatively unreliable.
After migrating an entire startup infrastructure from Heroku to AWS I'm even more against Heroku given how easy it is to use something like Elastic Beanstalk to do the same thing without many of the same downsides.
I've been burned by Heroku, though, so I have a strong negative opinion.
It is great to see the 'why not just host it yourself comment?'. Cliche as it is on HackerNews it always reminds me of the infamous Dropbox comment.
I personally think render has a great future, 99% of dev ops is the golden architecture involving a load balancer behind multiple app instances with a db and cache.
I don't want to care about creating automated backups. I don't want to care about managing VPS. I don't want to care about security updates (though unattended upgrades does make it easy nowadays). Let me git push with a dev environment and link available and start shipping features to customers. That is the value of Render/Heroku.
What's not clear immediately is that this isn't a standalone offering. It seems to be meant for use with their hosting service. So you'd already be in the ecosystem, not trying to hook it up to like a netlify page or something on your own vm.
(Render founder) Hi HN, we built our managed Redis service for people who already use Render to host their apps. You can of course use it from outside Render, but ideally you'd use the Redis internal URL (e.g. redis://red-longuniqueidhere:6379) in your code that's also running on Render.
Hi, love what Render are doing, the one thing holding me back from migrating to you from Heroku is Postgres “point in time” backup restore using the write ahead log. Having used it just once before with Heroku it’s indispensable. The minute you add it we will be making the move.
I know it’s on your radar but just want to give a nudge.
I've been hearing fantastic things about Render. One concern I have is about the trajectory of the company-- for example there was a time when Heroku was a great bet, then it got sold and stalled. What are the most convincing points you can give for why Render won't follow a similar path?
Does anyone on HN have first person experience with Render? Their offering certainly looks great on paper. I'd specifically be interested in your experience with regards to:
- Stability / Uptime
- How well the management UI / API / tools work
- Any services you found you needed but aren't yet offered
Yes I deployed a django application to render w/ a couple of additional services: database, 2x background workers and redis. Overall the experience was positive but I feel that it tries too hard to have a "simple" UX which ended up annoying me in the end. I would use it again but I didn't "love" it. I have a feeling it will be pretty good long term. Here are some annoyances I had:
- Environment previews don't always work, hard to easily switch between services running in environment previews
- Slow deploys because it rebuilds the docker image every time, no way to connect it to a registry
- Documentation is shallow, especially when things get technical or complex related to their "blueprints"
- Ran into a bug with their environment groups
- They proxy through cloudflare and had some intermittent issues
- Zero downtime deploy wasn't actually zero downtime
Aptible founder here. Since you mentioned compliance: Aptible is a PaaS focused on enabling cloud deployments that meet rigorous security and compliance benchmarks (HIPAA, HITRUST, SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, etc.)
We're not directly competitive with Render but our solution is similar — we support turnkey app deployment, PostgreSQL, Redis and other OSS databases. Our focus is on the problem of simplifying compliance in the cloud. We're also building a self-hosted SaaS version of our product for companies who want the benefits of PaaS but direct access to their AWS/GCP/Azure infrastructure as well.
The only killer feature missing from Render is a distributing the same app across regions for minimal latency. Heroku only pitifully support 2 regions.
I want the choice for my app to be global on day one with no devops required. Just two clicks and it's available on multiple regions.
Been very happy with Render after migrating everything off of Netlify (they started charging 10x more after reading our git commits). Great to see them offer a hosted Redis option!
Render supports building / deploying docker containers so it supports everything, including Java.
render.com and fly.io are in a similar niche of "deploy your app easily".
To me fly.io prioritized the wrong thing: deploying apps close to users. I care more about low price, ease of use and features than optimizing latency.
render.com is the best (that I know) "run a server for your app" service. I used Digital Ocean vps and then apps before.
Congrats on the launch, Render team! Like so many others here, I was a former Heroku user turned AWS-customer that is longing for an option with the positioning, UX/DX that Heroku offered ten years ago.
There's this bit of copywriting I see on many startup landing pages that annoys me a bit:
"You can now set up a Redis instance in just a few clicks and let Render handle the heavy lifting to operate it reliably and securely."
To me, it always feels somewhat patronizing to refer to yourself as doing 'heavy lifting' and the customer's work as (obviously) not-quite-as-heavy-lifting. Maybe in particular because I've set up Redis in the past, and as many others have mentioned it is really the epitome of hassle-free, easy-to-setup server software. So referring to hosting Redis as heavy lifting just kind of feels wrong or over the top.
I'm excited to see a solid competitor to Heroku. While I trust Heroku due to using it for so long, they have become complacent with pricing and features. For example, affordable autoscaling looks awesome.
I didn't quite understand one of the things which is offered in the blog post.
- "Access to the Redis CLI"
Does that mean we can access to Redis CLI in web interface? I need a product like this and I signed up to create an instance, and I created a Redis instance but I couldn't find the redis cli on web interface. I would like to access to the Redis-cli, and I don't want it to be accessed by outside of my cluster. So If I connect with my local redis-cli, I have to turn on External connections, which will make the instance accessible by everyone.
Clustering/HA is next on our list. We wanted to get the core release out quickly so customers can avoid mucking around with their own Redis container deploys.
We've been using https://upstash.com/ which charges per request, but has a nice SDK that allows easy Redis connections in Cloudflare Worker & AWS Lambda environments. It's been a very nice experience so far.
Are there are any good open source libraries that use REST connections to Redis so you can use it in "serverless" environments?
I use Caprover https://caprover.com/ and a DigitalOcean droplet to have my own toy PaaS for experiments that can run almost everything. They have 1-click install apps, and for apps that they don't have, as long as you have a Docker image you can run it
May I ask what the benefit of this is vs spinning up your own Redis server?
An equivalent solution would be to spin up a $5 droplet on DO, do basic due diligence wrt security (lock down ssh, firewall, etc.) and you end up with more memory, more connections, for less money.
I realize I'm a Luddite, in the field of DevOps.
Is it just the benefit of not needing to maintain the server?
Because we've been led to believe that hosting any kind of database yourself is an enormous challenge and unsafe and not-cloud-nativie-enough and god bless you if even for an instant you believe you have enough knowledge to run such complicated pieces of software that are harder to get right than rocket science.
At least that's what the cloud vendors want you to believe.
As a person from both devops and SWE worlds, it all comes down to "do you already know how." If you know how already, it's the way to go for sure. If you don't, the extra money to outsource it will enable you to focus on adding value elsewhere.
Now that said there's definitely a cultural belief in startups that you should outsource everything you can. It works for some people, but I've seen it kill others because they were sending all of their revenue to their vendors. The outsource model always suffers as you scale up.
> do basic due diligence wrt security (lock down ssh, firewall, etc.)
This is exactly the benefit. You don't have to do any of this stuff. For example, my organisation has two developers neither of which are experts in network security or system administration. So if can outsource this work to a 3rd party provider then that's a huge benefit. The difference in cost between a $5/month DO droplet and a $10/month managed Redis instance is negligible for us.
Yes, and the convenience of not needing to know how to maintain the server. You can point a person with a different type of experience at this problem.
[+] [-] calyhre|4 years ago|reply
I thought I was happy with Heroku until realizing the absurd cost and lack of evolution it grew to be. I've been there for almost a decade.
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|4 years ago|reply
I'm glad I switched when I did, because I think I'd probably have a $600+/month bill from Heroku right now.
Edit, couple more thoughts about Render:
I've been using Render's managed Redis offering for the past few months in beta, and it's been rock-solid. I'm really happy with it.
Also, I am delighted that Render's two United States datacenters are in Oregon and Ohio. My understanding is that they spread their customers across GCP, Azure, and AWS, and I could not be happier to be out of Heroku with its exposure to the tire fire that is AWS us-east-1.
[+] [-] D13Fd|4 years ago|reply
I do sometimes worry that one day they’ll shut down and I’ll be stuck moving to a crappier service…
[+] [-] tommoor|4 years ago|reply
Heroku: $15/mo = 50Mb memory + 40 connections
Render: $10/mo = 250Mb memory + 500 connections
---
Heroku $750/mo = 7Gb memory + 10k connections
Render $250/mo = 10Gb memory + 10k connections
[+] [-] cjhowarddev|4 years ago|reply
After migrating an entire startup infrastructure from Heroku to AWS I'm even more against Heroku given how easy it is to use something like Elastic Beanstalk to do the same thing without many of the same downsides.
I've been burned by Heroku, though, so I have a strong negative opinion.
[+] [-] bestinterest|4 years ago|reply
I personally think render has a great future, 99% of dev ops is the golden architecture involving a load balancer behind multiple app instances with a db and cache.
I don't want to care about creating automated backups. I don't want to care about managing VPS. I don't want to care about security updates (though unattended upgrades does make it easy nowadays). Let me git push with a dev environment and link available and start shipping features to customers. That is the value of Render/Heroku.
[+] [-] ehutch79|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anurag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samwillis|4 years ago|reply
I know it’s on your radar but just want to give a nudge.
[+] [-] seagreen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicoburns|4 years ago|reply
- Stability / Uptime
- How well the management UI / API / tools work
- Any services you found you needed but aren't yet offered
- Compliance with data protection regulations
[+] [-] lazypenguin|4 years ago|reply
- Environment previews don't always work, hard to easily switch between services running in environment previews
- Slow deploys because it rebuilds the docker image every time, no way to connect it to a registry
- Documentation is shallow, especially when things get technical or complex related to their "blueprints"
- Ran into a bug with their environment groups
- They proxy through cloudflare and had some intermittent issues
- Zero downtime deploy wasn't actually zero downtime
[+] [-] fillskills|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fancyremarker|4 years ago|reply
We're not directly competitive with Render but our solution is similar — we support turnkey app deployment, PostgreSQL, Redis and other OSS databases. Our focus is on the problem of simplifying compliance in the cloud. We're also building a self-hosted SaaS version of our product for companies who want the benefits of PaaS but direct access to their AWS/GCP/Azure infrastructure as well.
[+] [-] herunan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devmunchies|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colesantiago|4 years ago|reply
I want the choice for my app to be global on day one with no devops required. Just two clicks and it's available on multiple regions.
[+] [-] anurag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxbarrington|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phphphphp|4 years ago|reply
I’ll bite. What does this mean?
[+] [-] ksajadi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _vdpp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrBuddyCasino|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verdverm|4 years ago|reply
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/21/redis-labs-changes-its-ope...
[+] [-] wiradikusuma|4 years ago|reply
* How does it different than new "lightweight" cloud offering like Fly.io?
[+] [-] kjksf|4 years ago|reply
render.com and fly.io are in a similar niche of "deploy your app easily".
To me fly.io prioritized the wrong thing: deploying apps close to users. I care more about low price, ease of use and features than optimizing latency.
render.com is the best (that I know) "run a server for your app" service. I used Digital Ocean vps and then apps before.
[+] [-] anurag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roomey|4 years ago|reply
For big stuff, would it not be a massive drag not having it proximal to your app serve we a?
[+] [-] colesantiago|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshGlazebrook|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkyc|4 years ago|reply
There's this bit of copywriting I see on many startup landing pages that annoys me a bit:
"You can now set up a Redis instance in just a few clicks and let Render handle the heavy lifting to operate it reliably and securely."
To me, it always feels somewhat patronizing to refer to yourself as doing 'heavy lifting' and the customer's work as (obviously) not-quite-as-heavy-lifting. Maybe in particular because I've set up Redis in the past, and as many others have mentioned it is really the epitome of hassle-free, easy-to-setup server software. So referring to hosting Redis as heavy lifting just kind of feels wrong or over the top.
[+] [-] anurag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caseydm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatih-erikli|4 years ago|reply
- "Access to the Redis CLI"
Does that mean we can access to Redis CLI in web interface? I need a product like this and I signed up to create an instance, and I created a Redis instance but I couldn't find the redis cli on web interface. I would like to access to the Redis-cli, and I don't want it to be accessed by outside of my cluster. So If I connect with my local redis-cli, I have to turn on External connections, which will make the instance accessible by everyone.
[+] [-] anurag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untitaker_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anurag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imilk|4 years ago|reply
Are there are any good open source libraries that use REST connections to Redis so you can use it in "serverless" environments?
[+] [-] shazron|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julianlam|4 years ago|reply
An equivalent solution would be to spin up a $5 droplet on DO, do basic due diligence wrt security (lock down ssh, firewall, etc.) and you end up with more memory, more connections, for less money.
I realize I'm a Luddite, in the field of DevOps.
Is it just the benefit of not needing to maintain the server?
[+] [-] toomanydoubts|4 years ago|reply
At least that's what the cloud vendors want you to believe.
[+] [-] freedomben|4 years ago|reply
Now that said there's definitely a cultural belief in startups that you should outsource everything you can. It works for some people, but I've seen it kill others because they were sending all of their revenue to their vendors. The outsource model always suffers as you scale up.
[+] [-] nicoburns|4 years ago|reply
This is exactly the benefit. You don't have to do any of this stuff. For example, my organisation has two developers neither of which are experts in network security or system administration. So if can outsource this work to a 3rd party provider then that's a huge benefit. The difference in cost between a $5/month DO droplet and a $10/month managed Redis instance is negligible for us.
[+] [-] GiorgioG|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinob11|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakelazaroff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imilk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tschellenbach|4 years ago|reply