Hi HackerNews

I'm a solo founder who's been hacking away on Codemason for awhile now. I built it to scratch my own itch after falling in love with Docker but also getting frustrated with how much effort getting things set up “right” required.

I’ve really tried to focus on simplifying the entire pipeline from development to production. I think I’ve done a reasonably solid job on that so far but would love some feedback or suggestions for how I could take it further.

Providing hands-on one-on-one support via a Slack I’ve setup has become one of my “things that don’t scale” that I’ve really enjoyed adopting and offering to people (even if they aren’t necessarily a Codemason user). If you’re interested in taking me up on that, let me know (here or via ben[at]codemason.io) and I’ll send you an invite.

Not sure if something is broken, but after i created a codemason server i cant delete it - there's no button to do that.

Oh, you're right. Thanks for letting me know. I'll fix that now

I came here to say that I am a very happy customer of Codemason. Ben is incredible and helped me a LOT with his support through Slack.

I have finished building an MVP for my web app and was considering alternatives to host it. My biggest struggle was how to set up a proper CI/CD flow. Consider that I have pretty much zero knowledge about devops.

I asked for help on the Indie Hackers forum and Ben contacted me. It was like a God-sent gift. Now I am days away of launching my own, properly deployed, web app :)

Couldn't recommend this service more!

I like the site in general, but I am not familiar with your workflow.

1. I write some code 2. I git push 3. ??? 4. Somehow my code has been containerized and is running in a cloud?

I think you're missing some logical steps on your homepage, and also a features page that drills down into exactly what you offer (I get the general gist but what are the exact features?) would be necessary.

I appreciate this feedback. The home page is definitely something I've been trying to, somewhat clumsily, put together for awhile now.

The workflow is similar to Heroku's except it's all Docker based: 1. Write code, 2. Git push (your code is containerized), 3. Create your app/services via the CLI/UI. 4. Running in the cloud

I'll set some time aside to work on improving the home page and adding a features page -- thanks again!

What you describe is the same workflow as Heroku. This looks like a Heroku alternative and anyone who has used Heroku before will know what's up.

I have never used Heroku in production but I always did all the setup work using a hoster like Digital Ocean, the amount of time wasted to set everything up is indeed a pain in the ass. That's why these PaaS are always a good solution for indiehackers/small businesses. I believe tho the homepage can convey the message better, sure I understand what the service offered does, but as a developer who usually has to handle everything by himself, I want to know exactly WHAT is going on behind the curtain, even before a big "TRY IT FREE" button appears on my screen. Hopefully that's enough feedback from my perspective! Maybe there are other devs like me out there who dont just click red buttons, maybe not :shrug:

Ben, this looks like a great tool - you're doing an awesome job, keep up the good work.

Question for you: The benefits of using this as a private-Heroku-on-public cloud are obvious, but in the nicest way possible, why would/should I consider Codemason hosting over a large AWS tier provider?

Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate the encouragement

My big focus for Codemason is simplicity, so building hosting into Codemason ("Codemason Servers") was a way to simplify things even further - just click a button and a server is ready to run your app. In the future, I hope to take it even further and let people spin up "sandbox" versions of apps so they can test things out really quickly. Convenience and simplicity is probably the key draw there.

Just as a general comment on the entire space: It's very competitive and there are plenty of solid options but I feel like there's a couple of things that uniquely set Codemason apart:

- Being able to "cluster" servers from multiple cloud providers easily - Autoscaling capabilities on the cloud provider of your choice (e.g. DigitalOcean or Vultr) - A focus on simplifying things from development to production

As the product matures, I'm hoping the focus on simplicity will pay off in differentiating Codemason in an already competitive market

Congrats on launching your project. What did you use to build your landing page? I need to put something similar together for https://teamci.co.

This looks promising.... but you really should explain the tech stack behind it so that people have confidence in your system ....

Also, an explainer and demo video would be very useful to understand the product.

The tech stack is briefly covered in the intro docs (https://codemason.io/docs/master#what-powers-codemason) but can expand on it if you'd like me to

I like your idea of explainer/demo video. I think that would go a long way to clarifying the product. What format would be best for that kind of thing do you think? A walk through of the product or something a bit faster pace that clips together previews of each of the main features?

What sort of sandboxing are you using? i.e. how secure are the containers from compromise by malicious code?

What do you think is the benefit of your service over Heroku?

+1 for using Vue and Laravel :)

Operative or speculative?