How to create a web application without spending money

It all started innocently. One day I said to myself: since you love using Basecamp so much, why not learn their programming tools as well? I decided to learn Ruby on Rails framework, the very same tool that Basecampy and Hey are using for their own products. The tool is very pleasant to use and soon my entrepreneurial mind started wondering: hey, if you can create the web application for yourself, you could later on sell it to other people. Would it be possible to release it without putting my credit card anywhere and still have it ready for people to use?

Free of charge! Link to heading

What a challenge to solve, to start a business without spending a single penny! I knew that I needed several components: app hosting (to run the app), database (to store data) and monitoring (to know that the app is healthy). After a short research, I actually found all of them, completely for free! Here they are:

All these solutions provide a free plan without asking for a credit card.

What does it mean for business? Link to heading

Here’s why I’m so excited about it and you should be too! I’m going to show you how to create and test a product idea without spending anything on the infrastructure. Because you don’t have to pay anything, you don’t have to earn anything either. This way you can keep your current job and work on the app in the evenings. Only after it starts making you money, you can decide to invest into a better infrastructure so you can handle more clients, etc.

What is my experience with these solutions so far? Link to heading

Koyeb provides simple and powerful hosting solution for running web applications. The set up process is really simple and straightforward, so I don’t need to waste my time on it. What I really love about Koyeb is that it helps to keep my application running at all times. Sometimes it happens that the app won’t start due to some error. In this situation, Koyeb will keep using the old version instead, giving me enough time to fix the bug while protecting the users from unnecessary outage.

Supabase provides solid cloud-hosted database solution based on popular and dependable Postgres. The web interface is neat and a pleasure to work with. Supabase also provides a solution for storing files, so I can keep all the user’s data in one place. Because both Koyeb and Supabase are hosted in Frankfurt, the speed and performance of my app are excellent.

Honeybadger is a simple and powerful monitoring solution. When something goes wrong, Honeybadger notifies me and it also gives me the email address of the impacted user, so I can then reach out to them personally. This is truly essential for small businesses where their livelihood depends on their reputation. It also provides a public dashboard, where the clients can see for themselves how reliable the product truly is. The cherry on top is that Honeybadger not only alerts me when something wrong happens, but also when something that should happen doesn’t (like sending out daily emails). It’s a perfect watchdog.

Posthog is a product analytics tool, which is essential for understanding how the product is being used. This gives me all the necessary information to set direction of my product’s growth. Their free offering even allows me to see session replays. Web analytics helps me to understand who my audience are, like where they are from, what browsers they use, etc.

Conclusion Link to heading

With all these tools you can run your web application completely for free to test out your idea. This allows you to start paying only after you start earning. All those components can be also freely changed later, so you are not locked in.