p/appliku Deploy your app project in 5 minutes on your own server

Appliku - Deploy your app project in 5 minutes on your own server

Sniply

Appliku automagically sets up your server and runs your web apps from GitHub or GitLab. Set up in under 5 minutes, click to deploy. Think of Appliku as your personal DevOps.

3yr ago

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Kostja Palović

Sniply

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Hey, everyone! Today we present you Appliku – the deployment and app management solution that helps you deploy your Python/Django apps on any AWS/DO and any other cloud provider. Put your code in GitHub or GitLab, add a server, and Appliku will do the rest to get your app running. We come here today so that more people could enjoy the ease of deployment and save a lot of money in the process. Backstory Three years ago, I deployed another Django project and spent plenty of time setting everything up. Then went to search for better solutions, but they came with a high cost. So finally, burned by the pricing of popular solutions, I told myself: there's gotta be a better way to deploy an app without ever touching SSH or paying a lot of money for this convenience. That's how the journey of building the deployment solution for Python and specifically Django apps started. While the main focus always was on Python apps, today, it is possible to deploy Node apps and pretty much anything with the right Dockerfile. It started as a family business. Back in the day, my partner in business and life, @krisindev, and I tried to build apps in the e-commerce niche. We have created three apps in three years but couldn't get any traction at all. Then we realized that we didn't care about e-commerce space that much to keep trying and abandoned it. We built various MVPs for three months, realizing we needed a better deployment solution. We knew that we were getting into building something very complex. But we didn't know how long it would take to get a stable version out of the door and get the first customers. It was a side project. Since we had a full-time jobs, we had very little time to build Appliku. But that gave us time and opportunity to spot problems with deployments at work. Also, it gave us the first several users among our coworkers that we convinced to give our app a try. The initial feedback came from them, and we have fixed many bugs and added many features. We also had the first significant success in saving one of the companies around $7k/mo by moving most of their apps from Heroku to Digital Ocean. COVID & Lockdown & Family 2020 was a challenging year: lockdowns, curfew, kids at home, fear of deadly sickness. Going through that was hard. Going through that as parents is 100x harder. It was hard to keep shipping app improvements consistently, but at that moment, we managed to make ourselves ship at least 1-2 lines of code updates daily. Even if it is a small change, it is still a step forward. Doubts Of course, along the way, we had our doubts. What if all this effort to build such a complex app is a waste of time? What if nobody needs it? What if nobody pays for that? But over time, more customers came in, and with each positive feedback and happy message, with every "thank you for this service," we were recharged with enthusiasm and kept grinding and polishing the app. Those happy people who solved their problems reminded us that we were doing the right thing. All this positive feedback helped us get through 3 years of hard work. Marketing begins During the early stages of the application development, we didn't pay any attention to marketing. We wanted to have a properly working app with a small set of features. When we achieved that goal and had a few happy users, we started planning our efforts in marketing. Chris made a beautiful logo and fantastic marketing site, and I started writing tutorials. We knew that we couldn't just sell to developers. We need to show them the value and educate them on how it can help and make their lives easier. I went into hardcore tutorial writing mode. The first tutorial was super detailed and could easily be a separate course on setting up the Django project! It took me 1.5 weeks to write it, and it was a massive success on Reddit. I kept writing tutorials and posting them on Reddit. That alone brought me half a dozen paid customers. SEO grew as well! The post on HackerNews got to the first row of the main page, making our day very busy talking to folks on that site. We was surprised by how warm the app was welcomed. Notifications about new users were coming in one for another two days! That was the first time I had to put my phone in DND to fall asleep. Doing marketing never felt like real work. Writing articles, posting them, talking to users, providing support in our Discord server – all that felt like we are hanging out, not doing REAL WORK. After the whole day of marketing and support, I would try to do some coding because that felt like actual work, often leading to burnout. we have changed our view on marketing activities by now. These days, we try to do a few days of marketing and a few days of coding because doing both on the same day is a huge context switch. Appliku helps you save money on servers. You can enjoy experience deploying your apps with Appliku no matter which service provider you choose. For example, you can go with AWS/Digital Ocean or buy insanely cheap servers from Hetzner. We have a happy customer who used Appliku to migrate off Heroku and to AWS. Their savings are around $3500 every year. And it is roughly 1/4th of their MRR! For the Product Hunt community, we have made a special launch offer: a recurring discount coupon for 20% on any plan "phlaunch2022." Also you can get the first year for $39 with our AppSumo deal: https://appsumo.com/products/app... Thank you, and thanks to everyone for your support!