Now V1 alternative

1

Looks like Zeit is sunsetting Now V1. They’re not allowing new deployments on V1, even for legacy users.

Is there a good alternative for it? Preferably something that has…

Minimal configuration (like now.json)
Handling of domain names and auto-generating SSL certificates (like now domain)
CLI utility
Pricing like Now or close to it

2

I just switched from now v1 to heroku. I was using meteor-now to deploy before and now I’m using meteor-hero which just came out, made by the same person. So far it’s working great.

I’m just using it for a hobby application so I can’t speak to using it for serious production apps. It fills my needs though. You get a free <appname>.herokuapp.com url and free *.herokuapp.com SSL cert. The free tier doesn’t force SSL though so I’m using the force-ssl package for that.

As with now your app will go to sleep if it doesn’t get any requests for an hour. It takes a while to wake up from sleep so I’m using a cronjob to ping it and keep it awake. You get 550 free dyno hours per month which equates to 23 days of it running without sleep. In order to get a whole month out of it you could let it sleep at certain times of the day or you can add a credit card which gets you an additional 450 free dyno hours.

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3

Thanks! We were on Now’s basic tier ($15/mo).

We’d definitely need to be able to use a custom domain name, and scale up to multiple servers if needed.

Looks like it says it can scale up to production features… But doesn’t really cover any of that on the README.

Do you know if they support custom domain aliasing, or if it’s basically just for the free tier out of the box, that will need some forking and customization before it can be used in a production setup?

4

I’m not sure, might want to create an issue over on meteor-hero and ask.

My best guess would be that after your initial deployment, you configure your domain aliasing via the heroku dashboard or CLI, and then subsequent deployments could be done with meteor-hero's -u flag without having to reconfigure anything.

5

Thanks. This also looks kind of interesting, like a Now clone:

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