Hosting Cloud Servers [NodeJs]

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I’m very new to doing anything back end so I’m taking a huge part of my time learning so sorry ahead of time on any incorrect information/assumptions/ideas haha.

FCC showed me that I can host applications made with Express that serve static websites or dynamic websites but I don’t see the equivalent for express servers that only sit and wait for requests and send information. Is there something like Heroku out there? Or how do i do it myself on a separate PC properly and safe?

Without explaining the entire project; I wanted to make separate servers that serve json files for an application that behaves like Pinterest that is hosted on Heroku. It would make requests in its HTML/JS files and those servers hosted elsewhere would be there to give information that I wouldn’t want to put in Firebase.

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The micro service back end projects basically get you to do exactly this: you make single purpose back end apps that spit out JSON objects when you hit a particular endpoint.

Check out my image abstraction layer as an example: https://powerful-lowlands-49298.herokuapp.com

The stack I use for most of these is Node, express, mongodb, heroku.

Is that the kind of thing you mean?

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Awesome, it is exactly what I wanted. Did you put this on Github too?

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Yeah, you can see all my back end APIs (live and repos) linked at my portfolio: http://jacksonbates.me

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If you’re serious about it:

  • Heroku (some of the paid options), although they don’t provide you with a VPS or anything, they just let you deploy stuff there and then use plugins if you wish (MongoLab for example).
  • Mediatemple VPS, it’s a bit pricey but they have their reputation.
  • DigitalOcean, these guys are very professional, the documentation section is HUGE, and I mean it, there’s almost an answer for every question you can possibly have, and the smallest VPS (droplet) costs 5 bucks a month.
  • Amazon Web Services, dunno, never used it but they say it’s great as well

If you’re just testing:

  • Hyperdev, no database, no vps, just a nodejs coding environment, good for the API microservice challenges, the projects don’t seem to fade away soon or go into an unwakeable comma like Cloud9 free tier does. A subdomain is given to you for every project you create but you can’t change its name yet.

  • Cloud9, super complete, it gives you an ubuntu virtual machine and a subdomain you can start working on your full-stack projects if you don’t want to use Heroku, but careful, they go to sleep after a few days of no use and I’m not sure if they can be awakened after a request to the server.

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Awesome. I am using cloudatcost, their service has not been so reliable but the price is good.