Now: realtime Node.js deployments

I used to use a project called now on npm that was abandoned a few years ago (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Flotype&#x2F;now" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Flotype&#x2F;now</a>). I was curious how this new project was using the same name on npm as the previous now that I had used.<p>Looking at the npm release history, versions &lt;= 0.8.1 are the old project, and the new project picked up at 0.9.0 (should have been 1.0.0 I guess). This is consistent with npm&#x27;s statements about package name transfers during the leftpad debacle, but there&#x27;s just something weird about reusing package names for totally different projects...

Had to read three pages and still haven&#x27;t quite confirmed that this is node.js hosting. But based on the pricing page, I guess it is. Can you please just say that? Just say &quot;It&#x27;s node hosting and the deployment system is fast.&quot; You literally just stole some of my life.

Red Hat Openshift has a solid free tier, free SSL, git push deployments, node &#x2F; ruby &#x2F; python &#x2F; java &#x2F; php &#x2F; etc., mysql &#x2F; postgres, redis. Why would I use this over that?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openshift.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openshift.com&#x2F;</a>

CEO of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zeit.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zeit.co</a> here! Happy to answer any questions throughout the day :)

The pricing structure is missing a couple of middle tiers and overall the service lacks useful features. For instance: I could buy a $5&#x2F;mo droplet in Digital Ocean, one click install node, even use my own domain and manage deployments&#x2F;restarts almost as easy. For that money I get 1TB transfer and 20GB ssd and many more features (b&#x2F;c I basically get a VPS where I can do whatever). It takes me 10 min to setup the server and zero minutes to deploy each new version (I use deploybot so every git push is really a deployment).<p>Some things are not clear:<p>&quot;Dynamic realtime scaling&quot; Forever? Unlimited? Say 1MM concurrent API calls for $15&#x2F;mo?<p>URLs change after each deployment? Do I need to update endpoints on all clients?

This looks cool. It&#x27;s like <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;surge.sh" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;surge.sh</a> but for the backend.

Off topic: Right when I saw the terminal, I instinctively typed &quot;ls&quot;. Not sure now if that&#x27;s what triggered the animation or not but regardless it was a neat occurrence (I also just want to leave it at that ;) ) Yayy muscle memory!

&gt; You can think of 𝚫 now as a CDN for dynamic code (microservices and backends).<p>Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm not a CDN.

&gt; NOTE: npm start has to listen on a port. It can be any port!<p>Does this mean you forward port 80&#x2F;443 to whatever port the app is listening on, or I can have my app listen on random external ports?

What makes the deployment &quot;realtime&quot;? Is it just that you get terminal output of the deploy happening? That&#x27;s been around for a while now. Or am I missing something?

Is there really no way to delete a deployment?

This looks very promising for the node community. I was wondering which cloud infrastructure service they went with to power this. According to the FAQ, they don&#x27;t rely on just one. Very cool, and if implemented correctly, more resilient.<p><pre><code> Multi-cloud. We don&#x27;t depend on a single specific cloud provider, but abstract them instead. </code></pre> P.S. Is the markdown parsing broken on the FAQ? Or is that part of the look they&#x27;re going for?

Does this support native modules and is it running on Linux 64?<p>If so it&#x27;d be an interesting &quot;hack&quot; to have it run arbitrary code. You could have the default &quot;npm run&quot; script download a python&#x2F;ruby&#x2F;golang&#x2F;foobar runtime and kick start an app on the expected port.

Are these zero downtime deployments?

Very cool! I was just saying how hard it is to get someone to deploy a quick node app. Trying it with a React + Express app right now. Taking a while to deploy but I assume you are getting hammered.

You don&#x27;t really mention this in the pricing section but I assume for the paid plan, it gives you the option to hide the &#x2F;_src feature based on something (IP, etc.)?

Looks neat for demo apps. I did try it out on one of my simpler express based apps and it failed during the npm install. Looks like this is possibly using ied?

20 free deploys a month? Is every update a deploy?

Like these quick deployment solutions zeit.co&#x2F;now and surge.sh Sacalbility and security is something that needs to be attested.

Does now only support HTTP&#x2F;2 or could I also use TCP or WebSockets?

Can you have database dependencies? Like a full-fledged SQL database?

Seems cool. After many years on node, and even writing a deployment service once (paastor) - just plain VPS, nar to make an executable, then scp onto an Ubuntu server, and scp a logrotate and upstart conf - that&#x27;s all you need man.

What happened if you did a recursive now build?

Is the now cli not open sourced?

This has a great landing page.

Fantastic intro write up to read in a mobile browser. Wish many products get to what matters like these in their descriptions. Interesting enough to try immediately!

Hey man, keep up the good work. I&#x27;m sorry this forum is so filled with trolls these days.