CODEWITHSUNDEEP
meteor
CaptSaltyJack
CaptSaltyJack

Reputation: 16055

Practicality of Meteor for shared hosting web applications?

I've been studying Meteor lately and really like it quite a bit. But since it uses Node as a server (and MongoDB), I'm wondering how practical it is to use to build web applications that the "common user" can download and install (a la WordPress). On a shared hosting setup, for example, one would likely be able to install WordPress or Magento since they run on Apache, MySQL, and PHP. But it would probably require a VPS for someone to install a Meteor application.

Is there some way for people on shared hosting to install Meteor web applications?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1340

Answers (1)

Paul
Paul

Reputation: 27463

No, you are unlikely to find meteor on shared hosting. But there are dirt cheap alternatives.

Yes, there aren't any obvious technical limitations preventing a beginning developer from downloading a meteor app onto their own development PC or a remote shell account, and/or copying one of the meteor examples, changing it around a bit and mixing it with new code, and then uploading it to a free or inexpensive service for deployment.

Traditional shared hosting + meteor does not seem like a viable option because a meteor process is needed per site. Another issue, probably solvable, would be the need to resolve port conflicts across customers for the reverse proxy between the web server and individual meteor processes.

Inexpensive (free-as-in-beer) alternatives

Meteor comes with a deploy command that provides free hosting.

From https://docs.meteor.com/#/basic/command-line:

meteor deploy <site> Bundle your app and deploy it to <site>. Meteor provides free hosting if you deploy to <your app>.meteor.com as long as <your app> is a name that has not been claimed by someone else.

Nitrous.io provides a free tier of ready-to-go VPS that can run meteor or various other platforms. I think the free tier is intended as more of a free trial than a permanent hosting solution.

PaaS (Platform-as-a-service) providers

A PaaS provides a downloadable tool that you, the developer, use to upload and control the hosting of your code on that service. Such a tool provides functionality to upload new code, start, stop, get the log, clear the log, show status, etc.

You do not have to, or get to, deal with root accounts, node/meteor/mongo setup, maintenance, etc. The technical specifics of logging, scaling, debugging, and writing to local files are important issues to consider when comparing services.

Examples include Microsoft Azure (node), Modulus.io (node+meteor), Nodejitsu (node), Red Hat Open Shift, and others. If I have left out your favorite one, feel free to edit it in.

This is not as cheap as shared hosting, but is more in the $10-$20/mo ballpark to start.

Upvotes: 2

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