[Mega-thread] Why Glitch is not an option for me at the moment

Glitch Feedback
1

Hello, so I’ve been a Glitch user for over a year, and it has been great, it was working. Until… This recent block of ping services.

I am hosting a Discord bot, Fact Of The Day, on Glitch, that requires 24/7 uptime. The uptime was secured using http and uptimerobot.

If I can’t use that to keep it up 24/7, Glitch won’t be an option to me anymore. Not for my current projects, nor future projects.

I am already getting complaints on downtime, and if this continues, I have no choice but to look for a different hosting service.

“Why don’t you spend some money to keep them alive 24/7?”
The paid subscriptions on Glitch are way too overpriced. Especially when you have services like Contabo. The storage and ram isn’t close to being worth it for the price. You can get a VPS for 4 Euros, with 750x more storage and 2x more ram. Including it being a machine specified for you.

If I had a choice between:
10$ a month for a shared server 24/7 uptime, 400 mb storage, and 2 GB ram.
Or
4 Euros a month for a VPS with 24/7 uptime, 300 GB storage, 4 GB ram, 2 cores, and full root access.
I would pick the VPS anytime.

If the free option wont allow me to get the 24/7 uptime that I need, I am not going to choose spending 10$ a month for things that aren’t even worth 1$ when compared to the 4 Euros option.

I am not going to just watch my projects slowly declining in popularity because the host took away my way of getting 24/7 uptime.
I have to look for a different option, a better option, a option that will allow my projects to keep growing the way they do.

It has been a good time, but if my projects can’t stay up 24/7 without paying 10$ a month, the time has sadly come to an end.

12 Likes
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Essentially, since ping services are blocked, my projects wont stay online 24/7. So until that is lifted, Glitch is not an option to me.

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3

Moved this to feedback

5

@Aprixia where are you getting a vps with 300gb of storage 4gb of ram for 4 euros? (thats like insanely cheap)

6

Most likely at contabo.com:

https://contabo.com/?show=vps

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7

dang thats nice, might just buy one myself lol

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8

Anyway, if you’re planning to get a VPS there, I recommend getting the 5 EUR one.

9

thats what i was thinking too

10

I myself are running (the below) with Contabo. If I’d buy that from anywhere else I’d be living on the street after a few months, but Contabo is really cheap compared to others.

  • Dedicated Server 20-Core
    • 2 x Intel Xeon E5 2630v4
    • 2 x (10 x 2.20 GHz)
    • 256 GB REG ECC
    • 6 TB SSD
  • VPS L SSD
    • 8 cores
    • 30 GB RAM
    • 800 GB SSD
    • 600 mbps internet connection
    • 200 gbps upstream
  • VPS M SSD
    • 6 cores
    • 16 GB RAM
    • 400 GB SSD
    • 400 mbps internet connection
    • 200 gbps upstream
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11

I completely agree with you, I have just started using Glitch and the main reason to was to get he 24/7 uptime with uptimerobot, its annoying that they have blocked it.

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@user1290212 please note that the blocking of ping services is TEMPORARY.

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Whether it’s temporary or not is unimportant to me. Because this happened in the first place, my project lost popularity. That is why I am switching service, to avoid this problem in the first place.

14

Glitch is excellent from prototyping bots and websites and all but it’s not the ideal to place to host something for production. Glitch was meant be more for small apps. Defintley get a VPS from somewhere link the VPS provider ihack mentiond.

15

I can also recommend evennode.com as a managed deno/node host, they have automatic ssl certs, you can run multiple apps on one page and they have a 30 day free trial for each time you create a plan. i have been a customer for a very long time now and think of it as the perfect host for larger glitch projects that are not meant to be prototypes. recently i created a zero-deployment script with my https://github.com/blubbll/deno-page project and they also got deno runtimes. before that i created an glitch button which would instantly upload the glitch project via ftp, but especially with deno, these times are over now. i would give them a try, especially since they have a free plan to try and delete and/or recreate if you don’t like it. the lowest price starts at 5$/mo

16

I decided to swap to repl.it for now, since with GitHub Education, you get the hacker plan, with infinite storage, for free.

17

Nice, the one regret I have with repl is the lack of control. Once it kept trying to install a package I cancelled installation for. The cpu speed is slow but the storage is big enough so I can install ai libraries so I typically put my ai projects there.

18

Yeah, I feel like im gonn have to move away from glitch. BUT GUYS, I FOUND A TEMP SOLUTION! Library of Code have cloud services where you can have a bit of space on a ubuntu vm. :slight_smile:

1 Like
19

I have an alternative to contabo, I’m currently using Netlify though for my projects and it works fine (see kidz.netlify.app)

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The only issue with Netlify is it would not work for 95% of people on Glitch. (Netlify only supports static sites)

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Static only site, you mean you can only do front-end ? Is there JS/HTML DOM for front-end at least ?

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Glitch has never promised a percentage of guaranteed Uptime. It’s really intended on post beta (not public yet) projects/testing before deploying. So it’s a bit unrealistic to knock them when none of the sort was promised to you. Aside from giving you thousands of free hours of uptime. `I switched from uptime robot for my dev projects to another free ping website. (Witch you don’t need you can just add a few lines of code for the project to auto refresh every 5 mins) and since I switched I’ve had zero issues

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I belive that you can do anything on the front end on Netlify. Netlify can also be used for static site makers like jekyll because it can run commands when it builds your website.

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The only option for backend on hosts like Netlify and Vercel (formerly Zeit) is something called “serverless functions”.

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25

Another annoying thing is that you must use a credit card. I’m sorry but I am never going to pay with my credit card for services I do not 100% trust because:

  • PayPal disputes are much easier to file than with a bank.
  • You can guarantee your subscription is “cancelled” with PayPal since you can simply remove it from the “pre-authorized” list.
  • Most people don’t have access to a credit card easily, so PayPal is their only option.
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26

Same here. Digital Ocean wants a credit card to “prove you are not a robot” but I’ve never been to keen on just giving out information like that.

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I think PayPal can prove also that you are not robot, and there is also CAPCHA which is weird why they require you to use credit card.

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PayPal also acts as a “middleman” between yoru credit card/bank and the service. So you can use your credit card to pay, but the service will not get access to it. Oh and PayPal balances are handy:)

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Serverless means no server, no nodejs? How come we store data?

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Actually, I still don’t understand what it means. And I haven’t used it because I find it very confusing. Basic thing is, you can use Express to route your pages and create a basic API. I don’t think you can use other modules that Express, let alone storing data. Correct me if I am wrong.

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Yes, this is a major inconvenience, but it is only temporary, the only thing to do is to just sit back and wait. However I do agree that it is pretty disappointing for a paid service to do that :crying_cat_face:

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Contabo is the worst hosting in the world. They doesn’t have a great DDoS protection.

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Yeah @ihack2712. I recommend SiteGround.

34

Just use Cloudflare for DNS and your problem is solved.

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I rented a Contabo VPS back then (~2019) and i cannot allowed to use Cloudflare to DNS, and everyone is just ddosed us back then.

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Now what is Cloudflare and DNS @RiversideRocks ? Can it help me anyway?

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I have to use a script to refresh the glitch page in every 30 seconds to keep up my project. Sadly, i think Glitch will not fix this current issue with pinging services.

40

DNS is the way that a computer finds your website and takes you to it. (it changes an IP to a domain)

Cloudflare is a DNS provider that also has DDoS protection. If your website gets DDoSed, they will forward traffic to their servers to protect your website.

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I won’t be recommending Contabo as a Glitch alternative. Glad I stayed at SiteGround.

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Use self-host for a option for now. I will stay away from Glitch until they doesn’t fix the current uptime issues, or any issues now.

43

Does that mean I can change my device IP into a domain with the use of a DNS provider?
Or, anything similar to create a website…

44

I suppose so.

If you run a webserver off of your home wifi, you can add the home wifi’s IP to your DNS.

3 Likes
45

Can you not just self promotion something that isn’t useful at all.

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  1. That is surely not self promotions.

  2. In fact, it is useful. You get an Ubuntu server which you can access via SSH on which you can host your stuff.

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you should be able to, yes

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48

I will still not change my bot’s host to a “shady vm”.

49

What makes you tell that it is a shady VM? Because I find absolutely nothing wrong with it, there are many organisations that offer free VMs for the purpose of education, including GitHub (GitHub Student Pack).

51

You can host on Cloudflare? I thought the only thing that Cloudflare did was prevent DDoS.

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https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/what-is-cloudflare/

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Okay, so Cloudflare is basically there to prevent from DDoS attacks :P⠀

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54

But people can find your home’s IP very easily, just like how I found my CNAMEs from a very long time ago.

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I have a similar situation. I convinced customers to pay $ 10, but the bot still shuts down periodically. Soon they will start asking questions again(

56

Lol, to quote myself “even if you add ddos protection your router will probaly go out first before your computer”, but cloudflare could solve it
Useful tool for tracing subdomains and ips, https://dnsdumpster.com/
doesn’t work for cloudflare but it’ll tell u if it’s cloudflare

57

My projects won’t even start, so.

58

glitch is having issues again: status.glitch.com

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Cloudflare masks your IP.

1 Like
60

Yes I know, temporary or not, its not for me if I am unable to use glitch for 24/7 hosting now.

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@Bee Check https://status.glitch.com/

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Also netlify has a bandwith limits, not sure about vercel(I host picture sites using it because of that).

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I think this should be renamed with MEGA THREAD

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I was willing to pay for glitch. I think it is fair and I like the serverless idea and integrated code editor etc. BUT - since I joined two weeks ago or so, there is trouble over trouble every day and the downtime is about 50%. This is not ok even for a free service. I give it next week to manage it…

1 Like
65

Hey, you guys should remember this, it is most likely not permanent, but it is not their personal servers. They rely on AWS so, the price would go way up. And the more pings, the more stress on the servers. I am not mad about this because if they hadn’t done this, they would’ve probably gone bankrupt. Just because you can’t ping your project doesn’t mean that it is the end of the world. And in the post it states:

We’re not banning the use of pinging (or “uptime”) services on Glitch right now, and we’d like to not have to.

So, this is nothing to get mad about or say that glitch is bad. Glitch wouldn’t be a thing if they hadn’t done this.

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66

Everyone who saying that it’s temporary are just wishing things will go back to normal. But the thing is no one knows for how long ban of pinging services will continue. It can be week or month or maybe it won’t be temporary at all. Why? Because Glitch never promised you or was intended to keep projects running 24/7.
They can easily say something like: “okay, pinging services are allowed again, but your projects can’t be online more than 16 hours a day and will be forced to sleep”. So don’t expect it to be temporary and you won’t be surprised.

67

Ah, these people, (you try to find a free hosting option when theres one right in front of you!)

but… Glitch is better in a ton of ways.

Now, I’m not just gonna sit down and say all of them… but,

you should see https://anidiots.guide/other-guides/hosting-on-glitch

and yet, even while pinging, and downtime, ya always know the very useful Glitch.

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The ban makes sense though. Almost all of the downtimes are because of pinged projects. But, people who use stuff like Awake can bypass it. But, most of Glitch’s community, are people who “rely” on pinging, but, in reality, if you need it, just use something that will naturally keep it up. These will be things, such as APIs, Discord bots, event listeners, etc. Each can use requests to stay up, for instance, APIs can receive get requests for data, Discord bots can do what they do, and event listeners are self-explanatory. But, pining projects just put an unnecessary amount of pressure on the severs.

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The one reason I don’t code directly in github is that when you edit a file it takes a few seconds or minutes for the change to show up in the actual site.

3 Likes
70

And the GitHub editor sucks. And there’s no live preview. But GitPod is different and better.

71

Yeah, if only they got rid of the 50 hour limit for covid-19

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If you have the GitHub Student Pack, you get 100 hours although I haven’t used it.

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As soon as my library of code account gets unlocked after investigation I’m going to try to install something like eclipse theia which is what github uses to “build my own ide”.

1 Like
74

I found this repo called code-server which allows you to run an instance of VSCode so that you can code remotely and save your files. But it is too big for Glitch so I’m gonna try it on my Library of Code server.

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It didn’t work I already tried it, because somehow the websocket connection can’t be established

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What about hosting bot/website on phone? Since those devices run 24/7 for most of the time, I think there is possibility for it. I just don’t know how to host node js (built on express) website on mobile. Of course I am not talking about big websites with lots of data.

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Technically, while it is possible to expose ports on a phone device, I don’t think there is any software for automating hosting :confused:

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Maybe I knew how to make one, I could make app that would enable you to remotely edit files… But I don’t know how I would install node js packages.

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Disocrd js has a browser version :stuck_out_tongue: but if you have android, I’d say go for it with a terminal app and install nvm/node

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How do you even access a terminal on Android?

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I’m afraid to ask what the difference “in pressure” to the servers between pinging services and imitating project activity.

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I’m not gonna lie, every free hosting site I have used (usually PHP - e.g. InfinityFree and x10Hosting) have gone like this. I found them, they were good, then comes the downtime. Errors, slow loading, etc. I have seen it all. I thought Glitch was different, as they handle things different and seem a bit more professional, but no. It’s not really gone that way. I moved my website to Glitch a week ago from x10Hosting and now I’m thinking that maybe I shouldn’t. Hey, ho! I’ve not payed anything so I can’t complain much, which is the excuse most of these businesses give for the errors and slow support response (Glitch is OK at that though). I’m still gonna keep using Glitch though as it is the best and they care for the community much more than those other sites :slight_smile:

7 Likes
83

Yes, Glitch is awesome

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60 replies while i was sleeping-

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Megathread is for over 100 posts I believe.

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mmlol, in this rate, it will get there very soon. I am just looking at my mail on the phone, and I just see like a ton of mails as far as my phone can reach.

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Lol. I get that many too. I unsubscribed though.

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I wont unsubscribe since it is quite fun to just be able to stalk the conversation without having to visit the site.

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Oh also, just gonna add.

Migrating my projects, downloading them is taking ages since it wont load in the project unless I refresh like 50 times. And then starting the download takes ages as well.

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If you could get your hands on a Unix terminal for a mobile device I really cant see why you couldn’t host a website.

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91

There is a lot of apps like terminal on Google Play Store, since Android is very open to everything.

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92

I also saw this on github the other day:

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dang, i knew i had seen the site’s base before. something about vercel seemed familar haha

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Glitch does do some hosting on Vercel. (the “glitter” part is hosted there)

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@Glitch_support it might be cool if you could add a way to archive everything (maybe add a delay so that feature can only be used like once a day or something)

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Sorry, i doesn’t trust somebody with “free vms” and on a new created account. We doesn’t know who is behind the hosting and who is sharing the data.

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97

I’m going to have to side with @SplitXPlayZ on this one. Because Library Of Code isn’t a real company, it more just a collection of free services, I cannot 100% trust it. The website also sets off a few red flags, for example the homepage of the website is a fake 502 Nginx error, and the only way to make an account is to contact support and ask for one. Just note that this is all my opinion and I am not saying LOC is bad.

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98

Well, you could use it for a million other stuff, not just hosting your Discord bot.

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No, thank you. As @RiversideRocks mentioned the LOC isn’t a real company, and the website is setting of a lot of red flags. I doesn’t have any hate on them, and i’m not saying that LOC is bad. I just doesn’t want to somebody may leak my bot files data.

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100

Alright, I am throwing megathread on this now

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Now you can. It’s 100 now.

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Kidz is moving to Netlify so we should be fine for the next few.

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Edited the title a bit to follow the unofficial way of making a thread a mega thread (prefix the title with [Megathread]).

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104

yeah this is a megathread for sure… oof

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105

Hey i have a question, does your bot use enmap or quick.db because i’m having issues with netifly and installing them on there.

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Netlify only supports client-side sites, and thus does not allow npm packages.

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107

So, let’s say there are 100 projects running on a machine, and 80/100 projects are getting pings, the ping has to go to the right project, but all the projects use the same IP. And this is pressuring the network card and maybe even the CPU having to take all that traffic. Thus, making Glitch pay more for the servers. Now imitating project activity is different, such as a project pinging its self. It puts less stress on the machines, that run the VM.

TL;DR Version: Pingged projects are using bandwidth which causes the machine to stress. Imitating project activity less stressful.

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108

Well I’d assume that Glitch uses a loadbalancer?

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109

I don’t know. Alomost all of the downtimes were because of projects.

110

While I do believe that some of the issues are because of running projects, I’m still certain that most of the blame is too bad choices made in the beginning of fog creek. What may seem like a simple choice back then could have a lot of issues today. I know for a fact if the developers could go back in time and change some of their choices they’ll most certainly do that.

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111

it isn’t self promo. I found it on another thread and thought people might like it. its not owned by me and I literally found it 2 days ago

112

There was a bash bomb attack so they are not accepting new users until they have hardened the server

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113

Netlify doesn’t support discord bots.

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Netlify doesn’t even support back-end code.

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115

Gitpod is an option, its free and open source. Plus fast

But… You need github to use it

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Are you saying that glitch didn’t patch the famous :(){ :|:& };: shell shock? Well be damned…

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Netlify does not even look like a good tool from their homepage

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Oh and one of those VPSes don’t work as well as glitch

:glitch:

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What do you mean? :glitch:

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If Glitch wasn’t so overpriced it wouldn’t be that bad, but the prices are too expensive for what it offers, as others have said you can get a VPS much better than this for around $4 which is not only cheaper then glitch, but offers a lot more.

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121

Glitch is easier to use though

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You could say you’re paying extra for ease of use.

Also, Glitch is a bit more for testing then hosting large professional apps.

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125

VPS’ don’t provide the ease of use of Glitch, no matter the price though. Glitch’s premium plan is the only thing like it on the market which obviously makes it be more valued.

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126

it is what makes glitch so great, because when you compare to the benefits you get on other services- you’ll be sure to agree

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127

There is still no such service:

  • integrated IDE (= I can dev on my iPad)
  • integrated CDN
  • auto public folder
  • no need to admin the OS and runtime
  • as much project as you need
  • simple “rewind”
  • sharing / mashups etc.
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128

And a support team to help you out if you have issues and regular backups that the support team can reinstate if rewind yields no results :slight_smile:

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For Discord Bots, disk space doesn’t mean anything at all. I mean you don’t want none, but you don’t need Contabo’s 300GB (I think). I am running server data for 350 servers and my disk space is about 8% when I wasn’t on premium a few days ago.

At first, I thought Glitch’s deal was over priced, but really it isn’t. You just need to make value out of it. Glitch offers FIVE projects boosted, meaning if you just had one. $2 a month for 2GB ram? No one offers that! The disk space may be small, but you don’t need more than a gigabyte, at least not for my bot of 350 servers running at 4% disk space (on premium).

What you have to do, is make value out of the premium. It is an insanely good deal if you can make value out of it, make more bots, a website. It is worth it if you can make value out of it.

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130

buddy, that’s a small number. You’ll experience that as your bot grows, Glitch will become a HUGE problem due to the limitations. I was hosting a bot on Glitch a while ago, of which purpose required a lot of datastorage. And guess what… At only about 100 servers, it simply just wasn’t functioning on Glitch anymore. And now it’s suspended. Trust me, for 90% of the bots you’re going to host, anything will be better Glitch. Especially better than Glitch Premium

1 Like
131

Please don’t quote the whole previous post. Why???

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I am thinking about switching out of glitch just because nowadays the server is down so often that i can’t even load my own project… I use glitch for teaching cuz i like their interface but if the server keeps acting like this, i have to switch out to a more stable option

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I think the reason for the price mostly is that you can boost up to 5 projects. Most people won’t need to boost more than 1 to be completely honest.

134

makes sense
20chars20

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Before I had boosted my apps, 350 servers ran fine as long as my bot wasn’t in the Discord Bot List. The average total users count was 25,000 and everything was pretty good, ram chilled at 30-40%.