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This post is translated by ChatGPT and originally written in Mandarin, so there may be some inaccuracies or mistakes.
A Serendipitous Encounter
It seems like fate had its hand in it when, a few days ago, the founder of Zeabur visited Fukuoka. At that time, I was actively seeking people to chat and dine with. After expressing my thoughts on Twitter and being favored by the algorithm, I stumbled upon his tweet about being in Fukuoka and decided to follow him. Consequently, the founder of Zeabur reached out under my tweet and we arranged to meet the following day.
The founder, a recent computer science graduate from Taiwan, and I decided to indulge in one of Fukuoka’s specialties — Mizutaki. That day, I had a delightful conversation with Yuanlin, sharing various insights and thoroughly enjoying our exchange.
It was evident that he was accustomed to interacting with people. Despite it being our first meeting, we exchanged many profound and sincere thoughts. At the time, I was assisting a Japanese startup, and upon hearing about the challenges I was facing, he proposed a collaboration and discount plan.
This trait of looking to see how one could be of help was particularly appealing to me, and it’s something I aspire to embody myself — being okay with taking a slight loss if necessary.
Zeabur — Deploy Your Service with One Click
Getting back to the main topic.
As a developer who enjoys deploying small projects, choosing the right platform for deployment is crucial. Developers usually seek a plug-and-play deployment process, aiming for a swift launch without the hassle of setting up a machine from scratch.
Over the years, I’ve experimented with numerous deployment tools and cloud service providers, including:
- AWS: Including EC2 and Serverless Function, among others
- GCP: App Engine, Cloud Run, Storage, Database
- Vercel
- Netlify
- Cloudflare
- DigitalOcean
- Railway
This experience has given me a clear understanding of what developers look for in a service.
Today, I want to introduce Zeabur, and I’ll share my experiences with other service providers in future posts!
From my own experience, there are several downsides to using general cloud hosting services:
1. Relatively High Costs
For instance, running a database on GCP cost me over 2000 TWD per month. The benefits of managed hosting include high availability, backups, monitoring, logging, alerts, etc., eliminating many hassles of setting things up on your own.
However, for smaller services, these are either compromise-able features or even ones that can be done without. For startups or independent developers with limited resources, cutting costs is crucial.
I believe that unless a service has specific needs (like high traffic or concurrent processing), servers are not as fragile as one might think.
2. Service Couplings Are Not Obvious
For example, my projects might need to connect to databases, Redis, Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc. In AWS or GCP, this requires navigating through various pages rather than having a direct overview on the project page. DigitalOcean, on the other hand, only provides the machine, leaving the rest up to the developer with no clear interface for a quick overview.
3. Complex Interfaces
AWS and GCP offer too many services, and most independent developers simply need a server and a database, maybe an MQ at most. Their GUIs are cluttered with various options, making it tedious to start a machine or check logs, often leading to getting lost.
Some might argue that most services can achieve integration. Yes, they can, either by writing your own API backend or using Terraform, but it’s just not as convenient nor does it offer an out-of-the-box solution.
Railway
Two years ago, a colleague recommended Railway to me, and I instantly became a loyal fan. Railway stands out for its affordability and quick deployment capabilities, truly requiring no setup to get a service running.
Some features I particularly appreciate include defining dev/staging/production environments within a project, supporting deployment from templates or docker, and GitHub integration for automatic deployment upon new commits. This saves me from writing deployment scripts, allowing me to focus more on coding.
Within the same project, I can deploy databases, GitHub code, Redis, and the relationship between the project and external connections is crystal clear.
Their pricing plan is developer-friendly, with a hobby plan upgrade post 5, essentially making it free for modest usage.
Currently, I host my blog’s database on Railway, costing about $3 a month. The primary code is on Vercel, given its superb integration with Next.js and free Serverless function usage, which is quite convenient for my blog, far below the free tier’s traffic limit.
Introducing Zeabur
For developers accustomed to the convenience of Railway, one-click deployment is nothing new. The support for deployment from custom Templates, Docker, and GitHub integration with every new commit triggering a redeployment, are features Zeabur also supports, but I believe Zeabur stands out in other areas.
In terms of pricing, while Railway offers free usage below a certain threshold with the restriction of not being able to select regions, potentially affecting network speed due to distance, Zeabur charges 5 credit, making it effectively $5 per month if the usage doesn’t exceed the threshold.
Comparing the two, here’s a table:
| Railway | Zeabur | |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | $0.000231 / GB / minute $10 / GB / month | 4 / GB / month |
| vCPU | $0.000463 / vCPU / minute $20 / month | $0.0003 / vCPU / minute $12 / month |
| Network Egress | $0.1 / GB | $0.1 / GB (first 100GB free) |
| Volume | $0.2 / GB | $0.25 / GB |
Zeabur’s pricing is more favorable than Railway’s, especially with the first 100GB of Network Egress being free. For usage exceeding $5, Zeabur is the more economical choice.
Currently, my services are limited to blogs and bots, hardly worrying about Egress surges. However, for services requiring real-time operations or significant server-centric operations, Egress consumption is a critical consideration and challenging to manage.
With Zeabur offering 100GB of free Egress per month, this is a significant plus for me! Additionally, Zeabur provides budget control for projects, allowing for a set monthly limit to prevent exceeding budget and unintended expenses.
1. User Experience
Zeabur offers a smooth service creation experience, allowing database creation, pre-constructed Docker images, GitHub connection, or direct file drag-and-drop through its GUI.
After creating a Docker image, you can easily add environment variables directly within the interface.
2. Community and Pre-built Templates
Zeabur hosts a variety of pre-built templates, such as for Wordpress, where one might want the database setup included. Zeabur’s template feature comes in handy here, offering a rich selection of templates, though you can also craft your own.
These templates are backed by yaml files, requiring no special formatting.
3. Local Language Support
The developers are Taiwanese, and both the official website and backend support authentic Traditional Chinese. Joining their Discord allows for direct communication in Chinese.
While developers accustomed to the English ecosystem may find little difference, communicating with customer service in one's mother tongue is a unique advantage!
On Discord, the Zeabur team actively communicates and addresses issues. As a relatively new service, Zeabur generally operates smoothly, but the team is ready to assist if any problems arise, eliminating the need for a bridge between customer service and developers.
3. Choice of Different Cloud Service Providers for Hosting
The developer plan on Zeabur allows choosing between AWS and Huawei for hosting, with AWS offering locations in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Canada, and Germany. The Team Plan adds the option for GCP’s Taiwan region, convenient for developers in Japan, Taiwan, or China.
4. Connecting Your Own Server
According to Zeabur’s documentation, it uses k3s along with some monitoring tools, meaning theoretically, as long as you have a server, you could use Zeabur to simplify your deployment headaches.
Aside from using Zeabur for machine creation, you can also rent your own server and set up services through Zeabur by configuring SSH, essentially letting Zeabur handle your deployment tasks.
Final Thoughts
Although Zeabur shares similarities with existing PaaS offerings, my overall experience has been highly satisfactory. I do notice some minor details and incomplete translations on the website UI, but these are minor niggles that I believe will improve over time.
Moreover, Zeabur’s pricing strategy is significantly more affordable than Railway, making it an ideal platform for independent developers creating MVPs.
The ability to integrate one’s own machine and select regions shows Zeabur’s ambition to carve a unique path. I look forward to its development and plan to migrate some of my projects to support Zeabur.
For those looking to deploy blogs, database-backed services, Redis, etc., without incurring hefty hosting fees, Zeabur is worth considering! For static sites or Next.js projects, I personally still recommend Vercel.
Interested? Apply through my referral code to upgrade to the developer plan. I’ll receive a $5 credit, helping offset server costs and motivating me to write more articles for you all!
For more advanced developers, considering pairing with Cloudflare for proxy and caching could enhance your experience (It’d be great if Zeabur could support this directly 😂).
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