[_mlbt]

I’m similarly interested in learning Rails.

Does anyone here have any recommendations for free or at least very cheap Rails hosting for a toy app just for learning purposes? I’m looking for a PaaS offering since I don’t have the time to secure and manage a VPS.

[graypegg]

You might also want to try Kamal, which Rails is already configured for out of the box.

You'll still be spinning up a VPS, but at least set up and management is done via a very heroku-like interface from your local machine. Just get any VPS that will be accessible via SSH, and `kamal setup` can handle the rest. [1]

The one annoying part right now, is it relies on a docker registry you have to provide. I think they're working on removing that requirement, but you can use the free github container registry until then. It's just for rollbacks AFAIK.

[0] https://kamal-deploy.org/

[1] https://kamal-deploy.org/docs/installation/

[WaxProlix]

I haven't used their Rails hosting, but I have liked Fly.io for other PaaS-y things before. Heroku is technically still around.

https://fly.io/docs/rails/getting-started/

[evantbyrne]

Does it really take any more time to secure a VPS than a docker container on a custom runtime for a hobby project? Either way you still have to run software and OS updates.

[nimonian]

You could probably dockerize it and stick it on render.com

[evolve2k]

Happy render customer right here. We’ve got multiple rails apps running on render. Renders tech support team have been very helpful wherever needed also.

Should also point out the recently released Rails 8, has as key features focussed on making rails much easier to deploy to anywhere that supports Docker.

[aaronbrethorst]

Render doesn’t need a rails app to be dockerized. I have several Rails apps running on it right now.

[3pt14159]

Heroku is decent although I don't like some of the tweaks you can't do with it. For example, setting variables in postgres is neutered.