Optimal cloud service to run tiny website with back end Python + SQLite?
Web ninjas:
What is your go-to cloud service for running a small website served with python + jinja2 + sqlite? The website does little besides searching an sqlite table, serving a form, and writing the form response to an sqlite table, all with minimal computation and bandwidth. Wants are:
Low price
Low maintenance time/cost
Simplicity
My strengths do not include web development/servers but I know the basics. I'm particularly interested in the gotchas like: difficulties setting up SSL, transfer limits, and "X is perfect except that ____".
If I'm asking the wrong question or not providing enough info, please say so.
Installation is a breeze and there are plugins. If you're at all familiar with Heroku's deploy, you'll love this. It's the closest thing I've found to `git push` without any thinking.
PRGMR.com
1.25 GiB RAM, 15 GiB Disk for $5 per month.
https://prgmr.com/xen/
inexpensive.
no overage charges.
can pay by bitcoin.
(and a FreeBSD friendly).
I wonder if you would also benefit from
installing something like yunohost [2] on top of Debian.
This will get you your personal cloud.
And the use YounoHost's 'Custom web app' container [4]
This way, you get an automatically configured web server (nginx), with certificates (via Let's encrypt) that get auto updated.
You also get a pre-configured user/sftp access to your app's folders.
And those folders will be backed up when you hit the backup button...
Nginx will invoke your python app when the predefined URL is hit.
All you have to do is to point your domain registrar to the prmgr VPS host running yunohost.
[2] https://yunohost.org/#/whatsyunohost
[3] https://yunohost.org/#/apps
[4] https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/my_webapp_ynh
Google cloud run. If you can put your python app in a docker container (very easy) then you can run it on Cloud Run. They have a very generous “always free” tier.
I hate messing with nginx and ssl configurations that why I tried caprover (https://caprover.com/) on a vultr server. It handles ssl through let's encrypt and it even includes some nice monitoring tool. It needs some familiarity with docker if you want to fully use its features but in general I am running it on 2 servers with success and I am very happy. I totally recommend it.
If you don't have too much load, heroku could be good for you, but you'll have to use postgresql. The free tier is nice though.
disclaimer: I work for them, but used to be a customer long before I started.
How important is SQLite to you? I run https://crushentropy.com/ (high-res scheduling) on Google App Engine (Standard) with data persisted on Firebase. It costs me $0 per month.
AWS has a free tier for a year after signing up. A 'tiny' instance for webserver with letsencrypt on for your free ssl/tls certificates. You can automate backups via snapshots, though make sure they delete automatically after a week or so. I would recommend you use MySQL instead of SQlite, use RDS free tier there, SQlite not so good with concurrent connections and definately not if people are adding their own information. Look into haproxy as your gateway so you can scale to multiple servers if need to but not be tied into AWS specific Route 53, if you set it up right you can basically grab the configs, site source, files etc and a database dump and run it on a Raspberry PI in your home if you need to and have a static IP. Try not to get tied into one specific cloud provider too and keep shopping around for free or better deals. You can have a web presence for no money except your DNS registration with a little bit of tinkering and looking around.
Check out google cloud run for running your stateless webserver, its free tier is pretty good and you can run whatever stateless container you want to.
Personally from there I would use a min-spec Postgres CloudSQL for the DB, but you can use whatever hosting you like if you want to DIY.
Amazon Web Services. Won't cost much.
If you want to keep it simple..
A very small EC2 box. Maybe even micro instance. That'll run your python code + sqlite.
If you want, you can use an elastic load balancer or Route53. If you don't have DNS already. Route53 is AWS's DNS service which is easy to use.
This whole setup should not cost you much. If you do it right, you can probably spend less than $10/month taking advantage of the free tier.
Later on, as a side project, you can try to make the app serverless. You're probably close to it being serverless. Doing this allows you to run it on AWS Lambda. Which makes things even cheaper, if not free. And it's just pretty cool.
But most likely you'd have to switch to a real data store. No problem since AWS has DynamoDB.
Not mentioned by others, http://atlantic.net starts at $5 a month. DigitalOcean has a similar offer with much better documentation. I run a couple of larger servers at DigitalOcean and am really satisfied with uptime, management console, etc. So my vote goes for DigitalOcean.
But Atlantic had a 256Mb RAM, 10Gb disk option years ago for just $0.99 I still have one server there for hosting static HTML, running some scraping tasks, MS document to PDF conversion service (Python Twisted) for a customer, etc. All that for just $1.20 a month (including VAT)
Would definitely be looking at removing the homespun server aspect and going with a high-performance, low latency paas / serverless setup. Lets you focus on and deliver the outputs you need (i.e. user interface + data).
If I were in your shoes I'd be looking at either:
- Firebase (free tier). Probably just using their RTDB for storage. You could conceivably do away with your backend entirely here.
- Cloudflare workers + KV storage (~$5 per month?) .. this would give you killer performance and let you write your storage logic in python. You're paying a minimum fee per month here, but in reality that could cover a large number of seperate sites.
Both suggestions raise vendor lock-in considerations, but given the use-case it doesn't seem like a major concern. Of course if you're looking forward to the joys of managing a box ...
DigitalOcean (or any of the $5 VPS) with Debian 10, you will need to know "basics" like SSH and typing some commands (a bunch of sudo apt-get _____) and then you are done. The only thing you don't have with DigitalOcean is domain name registration but everything else is there. Use them for DNS! They have some pre-built stuff for your list here but I would just spin up a blank Debian 10 box.
You can also get a free tier at Amazon AWS but you have to learn all the EC2 stuff and almost piece yourself a server one piece at a time (like the good old days where you build your own PC but clicking buttons) -- IMHO this takes much longer than just doing a $5 VPS and typing things. So if you want to learn Amazon AWS stuff, this may be a good path but it is going to take a lot longer
Sign up for an Amazon Web Services account and a Cloudflare account
Python + SQLite
AWS EC2 t2.micro
DNS + SSL
Cloudflare free plan
Total cost = $0
I wrote this app last weekend mostly so that I could look at COVID-19 stats, but also as a learning exercise. I download data from John Hopkins, ingest it into a SQLite database and then have a couple of Python scripts to present an API to the front end. It is hosted on a Digitalocean droplet which costs me US$5.00 per month. Setup is easy - takes less than 10 minutes, and if you know Linux everything is pretty straightforward.
I also use Cloudflare as a DNS (free tier).
https://martin.schweitzer.id.au/covid19/
A bit of a mix of the other comments, but I use a generic VPS (I use DO now, used to use EC2, but anything works) with my application wrapped in a Docker container with its port exposed. Nginx reverse proxy to pass from 80 to my container's port. After that is working, I use certbot and it automatically detects Nginx and offers to automatically set up TLS on 443 and redirect 80 -> 443 to ensure connections are coming through HTTPS. certbot is a god send.
If you want something fire and forget and since this is simple I would go with a serverless solution. Static files (with some little JS) hosted on some CDN and serverless database. One option is AWS dynamodb and their CDN, a more friendly beginner solution is firebase. You can't get more low maintenance than that.
Can your code work on AWS Lambda with one of their DB services? If you need it to scale with growth starting on a cloud platform will save headache later. If you don't need scaling it's possible you could run it on the permanently-free tiers or very low cost once you utilize the free quotas each month.
Oracle Cloud only if you can use a their free VPS tier. If you can't, then Heroku or a cloud free tier.
I still use Webfaction for my webapps although since they were bought by GoDaddy, costumers seem to start moving away from it.. But it is quite simple to deploy a Python webapp, they have one-click installers and you can ftp your source files like we all used to do..
Prices start from 10$/month.
I like AWS Lambda with RDS and Cloudfront or whatever. It can be a pain setting up the VPC and security stuff, but it seems worth it because as far as I can tell it is extremely reliable and there is no server to maintain or secure.
Dedicated server.
16GB memory. 2TB of drive space. $25.00/mo
Another vote for DigitalOcean.
It's just a computer connected to the internet.
Used to do everything on Digital Ocean but had better performance on Vultr for the same price.
But either will do. My use was crypto trading bots, also using SQLite for storage.
Maybe try out glitch.com .
Search for Python examples.
www.pythonanywhere.com
Nice little setup where you get python set up out of the box, and you even have some options of quickly setup database if you need to go beyond sqlite.
It's very flexible, cheap and definitely a time saver for when you want something up and running quickly.
Small hosting (whichever you like best), plus cloudflare for DNS and transparent caching.
I just wanted to say since you seem unsure of yourself a little:
You have a really great approach to simple software. Turns out your strengths do include setting up backends for web development!
Many self styled experts / People 2 digit years of experience who consider themselves solution architects could learn from you and your approach here.
DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode
Find a friend with a hobby linode server who will put it up for free.
Scaleway, with or without their DBaaS offer if you need more perf
digital ocean, the cheapest VPS bucks one.
how about a raspberry pi and dyndns?
I suggest aws (probably elasticbeanstalk, maybe a raw box) simply because it's a very well trodden path. Lots of helpdocs, tutorials, instructions, etc etc etc.
Assuming you're a professional in the US / west europe, etc, the diff between $20 or $30/mo and $5 or $0 per month is negligible, while the time savings just from staying on a standard path can be huge.
My default suggestion would be:
Elastic Load Balancer, to talk to the internet and terminate SSL;
Elastic Beanstalk or something similar to host a box;
Certificate Manager for your SSL cert;
Route53 to serve your DNS.
All of the above should be cheap and, again, a very well trodden path with tons of help docs and people familiar with configuration.