Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with or paid by Cyclic, and this post is not a representation of them. I am simply a developer sharing a valuable resource with the community.
Boring intro
As a new developer, it is essential to have my existing projects up and running to showcase my work, and being able to do it for free is invaluable. Initially, I used Heroku's free-tier option to host my apps but faced the inconvenience of wake-up time. After completing The Odin Project and my social media app, Heroku announced the discontinuation of their free-tier. I searched for alternatives, but none were as user-friendly as Heroku until I discovered Cyclic.
Cyclic! A surprisingly awesome alternative
Cyclic makes it easy to deploy directly from my GitHub repository, and the best part is, there is no wake-up time, even on the free-tier (3 app limit). I now comfortably host my NodeJS APIs using Cyclic and my React frontends on Gh-pages. While the free tier may, or may not be suitable for production apps it would depend on traffic and usage. Regardless, it's a great solution for testing and showcasing apps. If anyone knows of a better value, please let me and others know in the comments.
Even the non-free 'Solo' plan makes an excellent value when compared to some of the bigger players in this field.
If you're interested in trying out Cyclic, click here to sign up with your GitHub account. (Note: this is a referral link that will give you and me an extra $10 credit and allow me to deploy an additional app for free).
How easy to deploy?
step 1: Click 'Deploy'
step 2: Click on 'Link Your Own' - to select an existing repository and follow the prompts. Once deployed, you will have the option to add environment variables.
Alternative: if starting a new project, you can choose one of their boilerplate installs.
Personally, I found Cyclic to be the easiest and quickest solution to deploying my apps, and so far I haven't had any issues with reliability.
I hope you found this post useful and would benefit from it. Happy deploying! 🤓
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with or paid by Cyclic, and this post is not a representation of them. I am simply a developer sharing a valuable resource with the community.