Simple open source app hosting

m4nu

I'm building a container service to run open source apps with a few clicks, while revenue-sharing with authors (if they choose so).

Currently in free beta, so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 $20 $5 in free account credit, which is more than enough to run 3 medium-sized pods for a year. New apps are added all the time. Currently we have:

• PhotoPrism: AI-powered photo organizer
• Uptime Kuma: Similar to Uptime Robot, currently the most popular app among LEx users 😄
• ListMonk: Newsletter management, like Mailchimp
• Code Server: Run VS Code in the browser
• and many others, with more coming

Also happy to receive feedback here or answer questions. In particular I'm interested:

• Which apps would you want to see?
• Thoughts on pricing?
• Missing features or bugs (I'm also watching for bugs in Sentry)

Thanks for testing!

Chievo

@m4nu said:
I'm building a container service to run open source apps with a few clicks, while revenue-sharing with authors (if they choose so).

Currently in free beta, so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 in free account credit, which is more than enough to run 3 medium-sized pods for a year. New apps are added all the time. Currently we have:

• PhotoPrism: AI-powered photo organizer
• Uptime Kuma: Similar to Uptime Robot, currently the most popular app among LEx users 😄
• ListMonk: Newsletter management, like Mailchimp
• Code Server: Run VS Code in the browser
• and many others, with more coming

Also happy to receive feedback here or answer questions. In particular I'm interested:

• Which apps would you want to see?
• Thoughts on pricing?
• Missing features or bugs (I'm also watching for bugs in Sentry)

Thanks for testing!

Welcome and thanks for your offer, but may be firstly you should ask for a provider tag

m4nu

@Chievo said: Welcome and thanks for your offer, but may be firstly you should ask for a provider tag

Didn't realize this was needed for free offers (no live billing on this site), since the rules say:

anyone can post free offers.

If I misread it, I'll remove it and wait a week of course.

jmaxwell

@m4nu said:

Currently in free beta, so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 in free account credit, which is more than enough to run 3 medium-sized pods for a year. New apps are added all the time. Currently we have:

Is it applicable for existing testers ?

Erisa

@jmaxwell said:

@m4nu said:

Currently in free beta, so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 in free account credit, which is more than enough to run 3 medium-sized pods for a year. New apps are added all the time. Currently we have:

Is it applicable for existing testers ?

Anyone with an existing account already has a $50 credit, check https://www.pikapods.com/account?tab=1

Abdullah

Using Uptime Kuma for NatVPS.net Uptime Stats.

Saves effort & time which can be better utilized elsewhere.

Ironia

so everyone brave enough to test gets $50 in free account credit, which is more than enough to run 3 medium-sized pods for a year.

Interesting, I had thought it was a time based beta. I still only have one pod, so in theory I could go for like 3 years if I keep it small. Are you sure you're OK with that? Maybe you should make promotional account credit expire in 12 months.

Thoughts so far:

• I love the subdomain I got randomly assigned for my first pod! Is there a way to reserve it if I ever destroy the pod and replace it with something else? I figure the chances of it being randomly assigned to someone in the interim are low but it did make me smile so I'd like to be sure...
• Many of the apps I'm most interested in, I can already install on my Yunohost instance... But I was not even aware that Yunohost offered some of them. This might be because you have a smaller selection, but also I think it's a nicer catalog to browse.
• For apps I would like added... Are Calibre-web (ebook management), Rsshub (feed generator) and The Lounge (IRC Client) possible? I also wanted to ask for wallabag but I see someone else beat me to it.
• Is there a place to view the approximate cost per pod per month without digging into the resource configuration tab? Preferably for specific existing instances, but even just a number "assuming minimum permitted resources for 31 days" per app type would be helpful.
• Now that pods can be turned on and off, is there any way to automate/schedule that? I was curious whether people wanted that feature because they only needed a pod for certain days of the month or certain hours of the day. Do they just want Navidrome up when they're at work? Do they just want Change Detection up for black Friday? I'm sure you can't share metrics because privacy, but wondering about the use case made me wonder if it's something specific enough to automate.

m4nu

I'm happy if someone is stress-testing the service and helping me learn about bottlenecks and bugs without the stress of real money. So feel free to use your welcome credit any way and for as long as you like.

No way to reserve a subdomain yet, just be quick to rename the new pod. Or just map your own domain.

You can estimate the price on the frontpage. There is a calculator near the bottom. Else the Resource tab isn't super-hard to reach.

Also thanks for the app suggestions. I'll go over them today and start adding more. Also plan on publishing some containers of my own, if the project doesn't have one yet. Progress as always here: https://feedback.pikapods.com/

Harambe

@m4nu said: You can estimate the price on the frontpage. There is a calculator near the bottom.

Could I suggest doing some example configs for popular apps and showing estimated pricing?

Example: I don't really know what the CPU or memory requirements would be for an Uptime Kuma instance with 50 monitors.

m4nu

@Harambe said:
Could I suggest doing some example configs for popular apps and showing estimated pricing?

Example: I don't really know what the CPU or memory requirements would be for an Uptime Kuma instance with 50 monitors.

Apps have minimum resource requirements. For Uptime Kuma and most apps that's pretty low, for PhotoPrism or NextCloud it's higher. Those will be selected when adding a new Pod and you can't go below that. Else the app would crash from low memory, lack of storage, etc.

I do agree that the estimated cost could be shown together with each app. Like "Run your own from $x/month". Added a new item for this on https://feedback.pikapods.com/.

Abdullah

Is there going to be a free-tier ?

Planning to move my Ghost blog to this aswell.

m4nu

@Abdullah said:
Is there going to be a free-tier ?

Planning to move my Ghost blog to this as well.

I was planning on giving some free welcome credit, but no free tier. With your beta tester credit you can run Uptime Kuma and Ghost for maybe 2 year for free.

BTW: I'm also a paying customer of WebHorizon. The circle closes. 😄

Abdullah

@m4nu said:
BTW: I'm also a paying customer of WebHorizon. The circle closes. 😄

Nice

m4nu

@Ironia said: Are Calibre-web (ebook management), Rsshub (feed generator) and The Lounge (IRC Client) possible?

Added the apps you requested, as well as PrivatePin for hosting code snippets and Smokeping for latency monitoring. 💪

Ironia

@m4nu said:

@Ironia said: Are Calibre-web (ebook management), Rsshub (feed generator) and The Lounge (IRC Client) possible?

Added the apps you requested, as well as PrivatePin for hosting code snippets and Smokeping for latency monitoring. 💪

Wow, I had thought you meant you added them to the todo list, but no, they're already in the catalog. Thanks!

... There go my concerns about the beta credit lasting beyond a reasonable testing period. In a good way, of course!

caracal

Thanks for the generous credit!

Would actually love to move some stuff to this platform; ever thought of adding BookStack?

m4nu

@caracal said: Would actually love to move some stuff to this platform; ever thought of adding BookStack?

BookStack was one of the first apps I added. 😄 But had some issues integrating the container image. Just had another look and it seems to work much better with a new image (by the good folks from linuxserver.io).

Let me know if you find any possible issues. You can probably migrate all data via SFTP. There is no DB import/export yet, but do PM me if I can import it manually.

caracal

No idea why I totally missed that bookstack was there! Will give it a go.

MichaelCee

Signed up to give Uptime Kuma a try specifically. Thanks for the free credit.

m4nu

Finished integrating the first batch of multi-container apps, which was my final larger mile stone. HIghlights:

• Paperless: index and categorize your paper documents
• Rocket.Chat: chat app, similar to Slack
• Wiki.js: simple wiki page for documentation, etc.
• Wallabag: Like "Pocket", fetches websites and keeps them for later.

In progress: Seafile and Discourse. Both a bit tricky. 😥

Enjoy!

jmaxwell

Apps have minimum resource requirements. For Uptime Kuma and most apps that's pretty low, for PhotoPrism or NextCloud it's higher. Those will be selected when adding a new Pod and you can't go below that. Else the app would crash from low memory, lack of storage, etc.

Minimum storage requirement of of uptimekuma is 10GB but does it really need that much? If we could set below that, resources could be utilized better. My instance takes just about 50 MB for example.

m4nu

@jmaxwell said:
Minimum storage requirement of of uptimekuma is 10GB but does it really need that much? If we could set below that, resources could be utilized better. My instance takes just about 50 MB for example.

Common question: I had to pick some first step that works for most apps. That was 10 GB. Note that storage is only about $5/TB, so 10 GB is only a few cents more. Since I don’t charge for storing the Docker image or database, it seemed fair to start at 10 GB.

Alternatively, I could start at 1 GB and increase storage pricing a bit at the lower end, if that makes more sense. Still figuring out the details…

pikachu

@m4nu any possibility to add Grafana+Loki and Prometheus containers for centralized logs/metrics collection?

m4nu

@stevewatson301 said:
@m4nu any possibility to add Grafana+Loki and Prometheus containers for centralized logs/metrics collection?

Yes, definitely looking at adding Grafana+Prometheus. Already have it running internally.

Leftup

I hope you could add SG to region selection, that would be awesome.

m4nu

@Leftup said:
I hope you could add SG to region selection, that would be awesome.

Will try to add some regions after the beta. Already have a server lined up in the US and could use Leaseweb in SG.

AaronSS

Any chance the limit of 3 pods will be lifted soon?

m4nu

@AaronSS said:
Any chance the limit of 3 pods will be lifted soon?

Just add any Stripe testing card linked on the billing page and the limit will increase to 10 pods.

And let me know how billing works 😄

Ironia

@m4nu said:

@AaronSS said:
Any chance the limit of 3 pods will be lifted soon?

Just add any Stripe testing card linked on the billing page and the limit will increase to 10 pods.

And let me know how billing works 😄

Could you add that link to the Account Billing tab? The link there right now leads to setup instructions and I was confused thinking the number was maybe embdeded in some sample code and got lazy. I didn't realize there was a nice table on another page.

Ironia

I finally got around to adding a test card (multiple actually). Not sure if this is what you wanted in terms of feedback but...

The country select on the billing page is weird. I assume it's sorted based on alphabetical ISO Alpha3 codes, but when converted into country names its not alphabetical anymore and unintuitive when just scrolling through the list. "Switzerland" is in the C's and Croatia is in the H's, for example.

I was able to add a Visa, Mastercard, and Amex, but not a Discover, Diner's Club, or JCB. I assumed that meant the top part of the test card list was the common / valid half and the second half was rare and not worth accepting, but then Unionpay worked even though it's the very last one on the first list. Maybe add a list of accepted card types somewhere?

I added 5 cards before I decided I was too lazy to go beyond the first table of test cards, but that already feels overkill. How do you plan to charge people, would it make sense to assign a priority value to each card?

I find it weird that the $50 beta credit is listed as being from today when I know it's been there a while. I'm guessing that's just a technical limitation, a payment method is needed to generate a credit log.

From the TOS

• "Thanks for using PikaPods." A TOS is serious enough that I feel like it should be "thank you" instead of "thanks"
• "Please use this service, like a civilized person."
  This line makes me smile, but I feel like the comma changes the meaning in an amusing but unintended way.

There is still one borgbase email address in the GDPR under "Access to Account Data", and the privacy policy just slowly transforms from being about pikapods to being about borgbase. Once you finish the legalese, maybe stick a last modified date on those pages?

m4nu

Thanks for the thorough test, @Ironia! Much appreciated.

Will have the TOS and GDPR stuff updated by the end of the day.

Regarding payment methods, there is already a feature to set one as "primary", but it's not fully enabled in the UI yet.

The welcome credit is added the moment you sign up. It's not paid via any payment method. Later invoices will show up their to add to the balance. So it's really a rolling balance.

pikachu

@m4nu you might want to look at this competitor of yours: https://elest.io/
I do have to say they have a better pitch on their website, and it may be better to adjust yours as well.

m4nu

@stevewatson301 said:
@m4nu you might want to look at this competitor of yours: https://elest.io/
I do have to say they have a better pitch on their website, and it may be better to adjust yours as well.

Thanks for sharing. I think it's pretty different from PikaPod's value proposition in that I target end users who want to replace personal services, like Google Photos, Dropbox, bookmarks, document management, etc. These guys target businesses who are looking to off load sysadmin work. They also deal at the VM level, while I'm at the container level to achieve more scale.

So I think this offering is more similar to our parent company, Peakford, which also offers managed servers and such to businesses, but not in a standardized way yet. Still an interesting concept. Maybe for the next project. 😄

Dazzle

@stevewatson301 said:
competitor of yours

Closer competior might be https://vpsz.io/

KermEd

I wouldn't worry about competitors yet either to be honest.

Your prices are significantly lower, easier to deploy, price much more transparent.

What's holding me back at the moment is some require me to SSH into them to finish setting them up. Which is fine but that extra step stops me from doing it easily on a mobile and then I always forget when I'm at a PC.

For me, the stuff I want to see is stuff I use at my business, and love the idea of this service. So I'm a fan for sure, even if my demographic is off a bit

m4nu

@KermEd said:
What's holding me back at the moment is some require me to SSH into them to finish setting them up. Which is fine but that extra step stops me from doing it easily on a mobile and then I always forget when I'm at a PC.

Didn’t consider the case of deploying apps “on the go” until now. Will review responsive setup again to make sure it’s all smooth. Console setup is only needed for very few apps. Will look into automating this more with default values.

For me, the stuff I want to see is stuff I use at my business, and love the idea of this service. So I'm a fan for sure, even if my demographic is off a bit

Which apps are missing? Will soon do another sprint to add the next dozen.

KermEd

@m4nu said:

@KermEd said:
What's holding me back at the moment is some require me to SSH into them to finish setting them up. Which is fine but that extra step stops me from doing it easily on a mobile and then I always forget when I'm at a PC.

Didn’t consider the case of deploying apps “on the go” until now. Will review responsive setup again to make sure it’s all smooth. Console setup is only needed for very few apps. Will look into automating this more with default values.

For me, the stuff I want to see is stuff I use at my business, and love the idea of this service. So I'm a fan for sure, even if my demographic is off a bit

Which apps are missing? Will soon do another sprint to add the next dozen.

It’s getting close to perfect for me.

I love these:

• PrivateBin is great - thank you for adding it
• Code - is a pain to install on my personal servers for me for some reason, so going through you is a whole lot easier for me, it just needs something easier than that ssh login to get the admin code

Nice to haves:

• Cal - or any calendar alternative would be nice
• PenPot - for UX designs, very handy to cut Adobe XD out of a persons life
• Heroic labs Nakama - it’s a back-end-as-a-service for mobile apps and games, like playfab but free

Price wise, by letting me install those 5, I could dissolve or repurpose one of my 35/m dedicated servers. If that helps from my perspective price wise…

m4nu

@KermEd said:
Nice to haves:

• Cal - or any calendar alternative would be nice
• PenPot - for UX designs, very handy to cut Adobe XD out of a persons life
• Heroic labs Nakama - it’s a back-end-as-a-service for mobile apps and games, like playfab but free

Those look all fine. Added them to the feedback tracker: https://feedback.pikapods.com/

something easier than that ssh login to get the admin code

Such things often depend on the upstream image and I'm trying to have a solid default workflow for now. Then add more exotic setup processes.

pxnji

I think i found a bug on your website

m4nu

@pxnji said: I think i found a bug on your website

Thanks for sharing! Looks like some of the text was too long, preventing a proper line break, which caused the logo to cause a responsive issue.

This is now fixed.

pxnji

Another thing that might be you need to fix from my suggestion
1. It's weird to see there is an image from Umami apps that the image is in below the description but the other is above.

2. The description/text is cropped for the smaller screen on these 2 section
   
   

m4nu

@pxnji said:
Another thing that might be you need to fix from my suggestion

Will see what can be done. Usually I just let the CSS framework deal with this and just set high level stuff like col widths at different screen sizes.

pxnji

Hello, i just check my websites that hosted in pikapods and all of them got error SSL handshake failed. They are using cloudflare dns and the proxied is turn on. Is that the reason of that? if i turn off the proxied the error is ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR
Any insight?

Edit: I turns out that all of my pods custom domain settings become turn off and back to the pikapods subdomain. I dont do anything.

m4nu

@pxnji said: Edit: I turns out that all of my pods custom domain settings become turn off and back to the pikapods subdomain. I dont do anything.

If you use Cloudflare, please disable the proxy feature. Else we can't check the CNAME record is still valid and will disable it automatically. This is because too many orphaned domains can cause rate limiting issue with the CA.

There should be an email notification for this, but that's not implemented yet.

So just disable the proxy feature and add back your custom domain. Then it will work again.

m4nu

@pxnji said:
Edit: I turns out that all of my pods custom domain settings become turn off and back to the pikapods subdomain. I dont do anything.

Just implemented a notification for cases where the CNAME isn't pointed to your Pod domain any more or the CAA prevents certificates from being issues. Without this, the SSL proxy will keep trying to get a certificate and eventually hit a rate limit, if it happens with too many pods.

m4nu

@Ironia said: I added 5 cards before I decided I was too lazy to go beyond the first table of test cards, but that already feels overkill. How do you plan to charge people, would it make sense to assign a priority value to each card?

This feature to select a primary card is now added.

I have also limited risky (= run custom code) apps to users with a payment method added. Hopefully this helps to keep such apps available, while keeping crypto miners out.

pxnji

@m4nu said:

@pxnji said: Edit: I turns out that all of my pods custom domain settings become turn off and back to the pikapods subdomain. I dont do anything.

If you use Cloudflare, please disable the proxy feature. Else we can't check the CNAME record is still valid and will disable it automatically. This is because too many orphaned domains can cause rate limiting issue with the CA.

There should be an email notification for this, but that's not implemented yet.

So just disable the proxy feature and add back your custom domain. Then it will work again.

I already turn off the proxy then im still getting this error when adding the custom domain Could not verify CNAME. Please add your CNAME record first.
I wait more than a hour to adding it again but it still the same.

This happens only for one pods for other is okay.

m4nu

@pxnji said:
I already turn off the proxy then im still getting this error when adding the custom domain Could not verify CNAME. Please add your CNAME record first.
I wait more than a hour to adding it again but it still the same.

This happens only for one pods for other is okay.

Seems to resolve as of now. I could probably improve my DNS implementation by bypassing the recursive resolver. That would make it faster. Currently it's cached locally until the result expires.

pxnji

@m4nu said:

@pxnji said:
I already turn off the proxy then im still getting this error when adding the custom domain Could not verify CNAME. Please add your CNAME record first.
I wait more than a hour to adding it again but it still the same.

This happens only for one pods for other is okay.

Seems to resolve as of now. I could probably improve my DNS implementation by bypassing the recursive resolver. That would make it faster. Currently it's cached locally until the result expires.

Yeah just trying to submit custom domain again and its done. Thank you for your help!

cadddr

@m4nu does the containers have ipv6 connectivity? Uptimekuma can't monitor ipv6only node.

m4nu

@cadddr said:
@m4nu does the containers have ipv6 connectivity? Uptimekuma can't monitor ipv6only node.

Yes, they have. Been testing with ipv6.google.com from the start. Maybe it got lost on the way, so will reconfirm it's still there.