What's the best platform to deploy your projects?

You’ve built your awesome application.

Now it’s time to put it on the Internet, so everyone can look in wonder at the result of your craft.

Here’s the question though: where?

Where should you deploy your app?

There are many different options, and it all depends on the scope of the project, it’s ambition, and how much you want to spend.

Let’s start with the “toy project” options, also perfect for demos and just trying out stuff.

One option is Replit. It’s like a playground. Replit gives you unlimited apps. However, each one is limited in its resources usage (CPU, RAM) - but it’s good for test projects. And each app gets a dedicated URL on the repl.co subdomain.

You can start with pre-made templates, install packages, work with any programming language Python Node Java C# Bash whatever It’s easy to fork other people’s repls too

Another option is Glitch.

Glitch is a playground great for Node.js apps and simple sites. Free apps sleep after 5 minutes, but the editor is very nice and they give you tons of apps to clone as well. You also get a nice URL. It’s a very creative platform

I would use one of those for quick demos and to provide a playground for my tutorials.

Now a few other options for things that are more serious.

One option is Vercel. Vercel is less of a playground and more of a serious option. Their hobby plan is generous and you get a nice subdomain too, vercel.app. This works especially great if you use Next.js, as they made it.

One option is Netlify I recommend Netlify to host static sites. They have a great free plan. No backend but you can also use functions to do some serverless functions. Pretty cool.

One option is CloudFlare Pages. It works similarly to Netlify but they have unlimited bandwidth. No backend, but static sites (they have functions)

One option is Railway (referral link). They have a free starter plan, you can make multiple apps, I find their database offering quite intuitive and they have templates for modern apps using SvelteKit, Next, Vite, but also Rails, Discord bots, Nuxt…

Now it’s time to talk about more complete solutions.

One option is Render they have a great free plan that includes static site hosting, functions (run Node/Python/Rust/Go/Ruby…) and free database as well. Pretty cool!

One option is Supabase they have a great free plan with up to 2GB of bandwidth and 1GB file storage, they really have a complete offering to build real apps. If you outgrow the free plan you can self host too.

One option is Firebase it has a free plan, access to database, authentication, pretty cool! Made by Google

One option is Fly.io which has a free plan that is great for experimenting. Fly allows you to build really cool apps with all their services which include database, load balancing, monorepos, etc etc

Those are all hosted options.

Another option is to use your own VPS.

A VPS is your own server. Running Linux. You can do whatever you want with it.

However, this requires a bigger effort. But you also learn valuable skills that you can reuse later.

DigitalOcean is my favorite VPS provider. Their basic plan starts at $4/m and with this you can do anything you want, including 500GB of traffic, database, etc.

I use DigitalOcean for tons of projects myself.

With my referral code you can get $200 in free credits that last 60 days (so you get the first 2 months free).

You can also get your own referral code and when your friends sign up you get free credits.

You can get a VPS from tons and tons of other services, also cheaper. I just find DO very complete in their offer.

Dokku or CapRover are cool projects that help you manage your VPS.

Tons of other platforms exist, but I hope this list can point you in the right direction when it’s time for the ultimate question: what’s the best platform to deploy my projects?