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Encourage developers, but how?
gestiondbi
Member, Patron Provider
in General
Hi folks,
We are currently looking to create a program to encourage developers. We already have a few ideas but are looking for more input from developers.
What kind of hosting would you like to see?
Would you prefer free hosting in exchange of publicity or simply discounted hosting?
What do you think of such programs?
Regards, David
Thanked by 1GCat
Comments
Alternate idea:
Provide them with a service to easily upload and execute their code in various preconfigured environments.
That's what devs really want, IMO.
That's something I am currently working on. Looking forward to more detailed suggestions, such as:
David, I think what would be best for you as a hosting provider is to try and get your foot in the door during hackatons and start-up demo sessions / meet-ups. I see so many startups going with DO or AWS due to bonuses/incentives even though these platforms can never scale in an affordable way for a startup that's barely trying to pay the bills. LET-type providers can offer a much more flexible solution but many developers don't know about LET.
I agree. Unfortunately, being a lot more smaller than DO, AWS or Vultr, we do not have dedicated marketing team that can go on event. Also, event like that are not so popular/frequent in Quebec province.
Hackathons are huge in Montreal. It's no wonder OVH has its first North American DC here, the community is very active. If you go on meetup you will see there are so many events being organized. I think even offering some event-themed coupon to participants will probably help bring some attention to your business during the event. Just google "montreal hackathon" and you will find tons, I think McHacks is coming up next in January.
As you said, OVH take a huge part here. They most of the time host themselve a lot of conference or meetup.
Like Elastic Beanstalk and Lambda? AWS is miles ahead with all this sort of stuff.
Developers of what? Are you looking to target a specific language or protocol or use case? The standard web stack stuff, including containers, is already a crowded market.
Nothing but an API.
Tiers. The free one gets you the publicity, the rest pay the bills.
Not much, since companies tend to scrap them at the drop of a hat. Even big companies like Google seem to think developers are just punching bags that are gluttons for punishment.
OpenShift does this really well, and I have used it on occasion. Anything that simplifies NGINX+DB and other devopsy things would be cool.
@davidgestiondbi
Developers have different needs, so you could probably just advertise "let's talk, we can find a solution" or something.
Unless you come up with a wildly new idea, I don't think developers need anything different than what anyone else needs from a host.
Developers flock to the big companies because we do not have time to stress over things like uptime, network, etc.
The last thing I want as a developer is to have to learn some new custom container/environment/config just to run my code.
I like @Jarland's idea. Using say proxmox to be able to spin up a KVM/OVZ VPS and have the code run and provide a detailed response such as file system changes, command outputs and the ability to run it on multiple OSes at once. For a small fee say $3/month. The VM sessions could run for like 30mins max. Plus a forum integrated into the control panel NOT separate would be nice for users to ask and help each other. Plus have your own Git system built into it allow private repos and have a weekly competition leading to prizes such as free credit or even money.
Oh, goodness, no! I'm sick of companies that want to start every transaction with a time-consuming discussion. A business needs to be upfront about the services it provides and the cost for those services. I don't want to go down yet another rabbit hole of plan features and pricing structures only to find out it's a worse deal than the VPSes I currently use.
what else, female live support.. j/k
I'll also add that developers are lazy. Anything you can do or offer to reduce the friction and work involved for a developer to work on what they really want to work on is valuable. Server hosting, networking, etc are higher level things. There's still stuff that most things inevitably end up using - a database being an example - so if a developer doesn't have to worry about managing such things they're happier. Just my thoughts!
I agree why don't @davidgestiondbi just setup a free ms sql & mysql hosting for developers with ha/failover as file is absolutely right I don't want to go through the hassle of setting up ms sql on my windows vps and also I don't even want to bother with the pain of setting up exchange server either on windows(I just went with zimbra ose instead it was easier lol)
offer Mysql as a service? (edit: just realized I subconsciously echoed previous comment.
Prometeus do that now I think. Replicated, backed-up, failover with anycast Ip endpoints and something something, i don't remember.
All providers have to move up the value chain now.
Here are environments we support: http://puu.sh/s9oqY/03af190693.png - & Python/Rails.
These were chosen after conducting some market research.
If you want to support an IDE, I'd recommend going for C9SDK - it's a really powerful web based IDE that's installed on your Linux server.
This is a good choice, also something we support. Being able to launch services such as databases or monitoring tools are definitely a developer attraction.
Here's just a list of services we support http://puu.sh/s9oB3/4ca6f5645b.png
Feel free to build a similar solution or, I don't know - get in touch because it will seriously take a lot of dedication, time and investment to get this right.
private networking
easy cp and plently of templates, kvm
one click install apps
dns, rdns , email
extended storage
I'm glad that we support all the above and more ;-), I guess we've made the right decisions.
@DETio, no offense but it would probably be better for you to only start making statements like that once you've removed your launch page and actually have properly launched your paid/opensource products.
This community doesn't want to see a repeat of: "Look at all the cool SolusVM v2 features! It's coming soon! Just wait!"
'It's coming soon! Just wait!"' - Yes for production, our platform is already developed and simply under testing right now. This does not mean it does not exist, or is not functional, or the user has to wait to test anything out - we are releasing a public demo shortly (we have a hardware issue that needs to be resolved first by an upstream provider).
We also have been setting up our opensource platform for users that request and supply hardware on demand - this can be used by providers to test the platform out before utilizing it commercially, that's why we have a system requirements page in our documentation
https://docs.virtengine.com/v1.5/0-getting-started/system-requirements/
We will also be releasing packages of VirtEngine so you can install the OpenSource edition with ease through a CLI in the following week - possibly even today/tomorrow.
Lol hijacking a thread with fail marketing.
Or just answering a question to another fellow community member, let's not forget that you're not the only member here.
Seriously man, do yourself a favour and either stop marketing here until it's released or stop posting.
Obviously i'm not the only one here. But this thread is about David's question. and all you're doing is hijacking it with fail marketing for a product that'll never launch and has no relevance to David's question.
Why would I try to market a product that will never launch?
Regarding relevance to David's question, he's trying to encourage developers to use his service. Our solution was designed with developers in mind, and features like Platform as a Service (IBM Bluemix, Heroku, AWS Lambada). These companies have deep pockets to develop such solutions, David doesn't. So our product is relevant, if David is really interested in attracting Developers.
If you don't think Platform as a Service is relevant for developers then I'd suggest researching a little bit more about it.
I may be wrong but my understanding is that David is looking to attract developers to use his services during development / demo phase of their products. The products you listed are aimed at production stage which has very different requirements. I don't know about your product because it is still not available.
Our PaaS system is designed for both Production & Development. Continuous Integration can be used to develop applications on the go, code can be updated automatically in the cloud with every commit.
Solus has been doing it with version 2 for years now, its not that hard of a stretch.
Just because another company chooses to delay their customers that long doesn't mean we will. In that case I wouldn't be attending the next hostingcon in ~8 days - if I have nothing to sell by then it seems like such a waste of money right?
I hope this is enough to show the community that we are serious:
@DETio Hey man, we all believe you, but it's a matter of moderation. (I can't believe that I'm using this example, but... too much coffee makes it so I cannot sleep. Likewise, if you post your adverts moderately and not hijack over 50 threads, the community wouldn't be annoyed at you.)
Another example is TV. They won't show me 10 minutes of ads all at once - the TV station spreads it out, so their viewers don't quit.
That brings me to impact. If the station spreads it out, ads may even be a positive thing. If the station employs 30 minutes of ads, then the show, that'll certainly lead to negative impact.
Now I'm a nice-ish guy. I'm happy that you'll be at HostingCon, but we'd appreciate it if you posted like a regular person (helping each other out, saying hello), and add only a tiny hint of marketing only?
Thanks! (this is just my two cents)
doghouch