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Show HN: Serverless Single Page Applications

10 points by marktangotango ↗ HN
Please check out out project, Lite Engine[1], a Backend as a Service web application platform. We provide everything you need to rapidly prototype and deploy your single page applications: static file hosting for your html, css, javascript and other assets, a subdomain on our site, security with https, and a 'create your own API' with SQL over CORS and JSON. I think of this as "geocities with a CORS backend".

For your backend we've developed a system we call API Queries. You'll define SQL queries, save them on the backend, then execute them with http post requests that return JSON responses. There are obviously a lot of pros and cons to this 'stored procedure' approach. Please chime in with your thoughts below!

Right now we're offering free accounts while we gauge interest. We plan to offer custom domains with paid accounts. What this means is when you signup for a free account, you will get a 'myapp.lite-engine.com' domain, with a paid account, we'll host your 'www.myapp.com' site, secured with Let's Encrypt certs.

All feedback appreciated!

[1] https://www.lite-engine.com

14 comments

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explorigin
Please don't call this "serverless". BAAS/PAAS is very much a server enabling apps that require a server. The term "serverless" is ambiguous at best but the general idea is that the HTTP server the hosts the SPA is just the application installation vehicle and is not required for normal SPA functionality.
marktangotango
Thanks for the feedback. I agree 'serverless' is ambiguous, but it does fit the definition here[1]. We are providing more than static file hosting, data storage and user management for example. One could of course use other 'cloud' services for these functions.

Our goal was to combine them into a 'rapid web application development' platform. I'd like to hear other opinions on this.

[1] http://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html

fiatjaf
This is cool, but should be called "Lite Engine", not "Serverless Single Page Applications".
marktangotango
Thanks! When I came back to this, it was too late to edit. I'll keep that in mind for future submissions!
mkrishnan
Looks very similar to backliftapp which provided Dropbox sync.

how can a user take periodical backup of data?

marktangotango
I couldn't find any info on backlift, which was acquired by squarespace. I'd comment that we're going for a toolkit to build sites, were as squarespace gives you a canned set of features, with our service you can build almost anything you can imagine. Something similar would be syncano, were they seem to be nosql, we are sql.

Data backup besides our periodic update (we haven't finalized the frequency, hourly for example) is through an api to pull a snapshot. Otherwise, we're considering backing up the database to a user provided S3 bucket.

ruler88
I don't really think using lite engine is that much easier than just building your own backend and hosting on AWS? Some of the library utilities you guys have are pretty cool and convenient. But there are lots of open source libraries that do much the same thing. I'm not sure where the target audience would be. People who can code don't like the restriction, people who can't code will not be able to set this up.
marktangotango
One slogan I've thinking about is "Develop websites, don't waste your time admining servers". Me personally, I've been coding professionally for a long time, I have always had lots of ideas, but the last thing I want to do with my limited free time is setup a server, I certainly don't want to do it in the environment I code in every day (java enterprise).

So, this product scratches my own itch, I just want to code a web application, that's it!

ruler88
I don't mean to break your balls, I think this is a great concept. But I think with what you were saying "don't waste your time admining servers". There are many PaaS products these days that help you with that. You can get a heroku server up and running in just a few minutes. I guess what I'm wondering is: why would I go with you instead of heroku?
marktangotango
Please break away, that's the best feedback I've gotten. Honestly I think what you're saying has a lot of merit, and given that I'm not getting much traction with this project at all, I think a lot of people feel the same way. My question for you, what could this or a similar service offer to make you choose it over Heroku for example?

I'll add I think there's an opportunity for price reduction with the hosted single page app concept I'm promoting, $5 a month for an aws t1 micro (for 3 year reserve) vs $5 a year for a solution like Lite Engine.

ruler88
I personally wouldn't trade the stability of aws/heroku for $5 difference a month.

I do think the opportunity is available for making the process easier for specific technology stack. For example, I used Meteor's galaxy hosting platform 'cause it works so nicely with Meteor applications. And it is so simple to do, the toolbelt makes it so that it is literally a one-line command line to configure and deploy. And I know that it JUST WORKS, I don't need to worry about nuisances of Meteor hosting.

What if something like this exists for say React? The JS tools fatigue is drowning all React devs. If you can make something that is super simple for say webpack deployment. That would be sweet! I'd pay a premium for that convenience and knowledge that I'm not doing something stupid.

marktangotango
But Lite Engine is running on AWS! For your react example, for Lite Engine, to deploy a react/webpack frontend application, you'd build it, zip it, and upload it. There are lots of static file hosting soluttions around now (github pages, bit balloon, etc) so I'm not sure what you have in mind there.

I think ultimately, the message I'd like to convey is, 'it' doesn't have to be that hard to deploy a single page app. This is heresy to many :)

Thanks again for the feedback I really do appreciate it!