Please read my post A Quiet Summer before signing up.
Alpha payment link: https://buy.stripe.com/6oE6qn1UL1oQetidQR
Note There's no automation on this as of 3/10/21. I'll follow-up manually.
Button is a simpler deployment story. It’s my take on how to get your app online if you’re not, and perhaps have no desire to be, an infrastructure engineer.
The idea was born from frustration. We all see an awful lot of posts on how Giant Company X did Advanced Thing Y to get over their Scaling Problem Z.
That’s great. But it leads to a lot of folks doing things that are massively inappropriate for their size or requirements. As a result, they spend too much time, effort, money on something that shouldn’t be that hard.
Deployment is complex, yes. There are lots of moving parts. But we don’t need to make it more so.
Button is how I deploy apps, how I recommend to clients that they deploy apps, and an ideal solution — a straight-forward, durable, and more than sufficient solution — for the vast majority of applications out there.
If you’re looking for how to deploy your app, then Button is for you.
If you’re already vested in more complex solutions, then maybe Button is not going for you. That’s OK. But maybe you’re tired of those solutions? Perhaps Button is the breath of fresh air you’re looking for…
There are three main parts to Button:
- Guide
- Tooling
- Community
An opinionated guide on how to deploy. The manual if you will.
You can think of this as like any technical book you might buy, except it’s online and a living document that will continue to be updated.
During the alpha period, this begins closed. Likely I’ll open up sections of it, maybe most of it, over time: I’d like to make essentials open access, but keep in-depth sections for subscribers.
This is software. Tooling to codify, encapsulate, automate the deployment workflows — it what gives you your Button.
Software needs maintenance, so eventually I imagine a yearly subscription here.
During the alpha, your payment covers all access, plus your first year once Button is ready to go. (I haven’t quite decided a final pricing scheme, but it’ll be something equivalent if we don’t settle on a straight subscription.)
Button gives you a canonical, Deploy this way!. Because of this, we have a group who are all deploying the same way, which means we all hit the same problems. Which means solutions can be shared. You’re not spending hours on esoteric comments threads, trying to find how-tos for something that only four people in the history of the world have encountered before.
During the alpha we’ll use the private GitHub repo for the guide to host Discussions, Issues, and maybe PRs.
I want Button to be a no-brainer. I look at some on the options out there and didn’t want to charge X per-month. Maybe that’s good value, but I’d have to think about it.
As contractor of many years, I have a whole host of software that I’d pay around the €90/year without thinking twice, so I thought that would be the target price for a Pro plan.
Thinking then about a Solo developer. Maybe developing a single app (or a couple of apps) but not dealing with lots of clients. I thought €50/year would be more reasonable. (Again, I’m after a no-brainer: if I were to pay monthly would €5/months, with a couple of months free for an annual purchase would seem worth it. I hope yes.)
So Solo is less, but won’t have access to collaboration features. (Perhaps one guest collaborator, imagining a husband and wife team, or whatever your variation is on that.)
For the alpha, I wanted to give a thank you for early support, so it’s priced at the Solo rate, but with an upgrade to the Pro level. I will continue that benefit for the life-time of the plan once we reach launch.
I will add a free Hobbyist plan when we get further along. This will let people get started and maybe run a single server and perhaps a couple of apps. (I haven’t settled on the details yet.)
For small startups and agencies I will have a Team plan. For larger needs I’ll have a Multi-Team plan. (Happy to sell you those now if you want to chat about it.)
There are four areas Button will cover:
- Provisioning
- Deployment & Updates
- Backup & Recovery
- Monitoring
The goal is to be your control panel for your deployment needs.
If you sign-up during the alpha, you’re getting there before Button is really ready — that’s why it’s an alpha.
You’re helping me find the edges. In exchange for that, to the extent I can, I’ll gonna help you walk through and get it up and running with your app.
(The ”to the extent I can” is just a simple caveat. The set-up is pretty simple but if you’re app happens to be deeply deviant, there’s the possibility there’s not much I can do…)
We’ll start with a quick call, just to work out where you’re at, and go from there.
Normally I’d charge for this kind of thing — that’s what software consulting amounts to after a lot of years doing it — so I’m hoping the evolving guide, the community, and the input from me make your alpha purchase worthwhile to you, whilst I’m rolling out the tooling over the next period.
It’s still alpha so, I’ll say, if in doubt, wait, but if you’re up for it now, I’d love to have you on-board.