The problem
We became increasingly frustrated with the cloud. In particular, deploying applications or dependencies that you didn’t make yourself like WordPress or Postgres. Either you go for the managed service or you have to learn docker, read the documentation on how to run the container, set environment variables, ports and volumes.
Docker (containers in general) is such an amazing technology that many software now ship as docker containers (Penpot, Nextcloud, Home Assistant, many AI products,…) but we don’t see how frustrating it is for users. Docker is impossible to use for non technical users and if you are a developer, let’s face it, setting up everything for a container is just bad UX, a waste of time and effort.
The cloud is just a computer so why should installing an app in the cloud be more difficult than installing an app on a phone?
This became a clear issue when for a previous project we chose to deploy an open-source analytics app that would have been a great fit for it. That was without taking into consideration the complicated configuration that led to the team struggling for two weeks.
We decided to solve this for everyone
We took a radically different approach to the cloud.Superengine is an all-in-one, no-code hosting platform to run open-source apps and create websites on any cloud or on your computer in seconds. It has a web-based user interface which lets you install, start and stop apps easily.
Self-hosting and open-source is not only for startups or devs. It’s for anyone that wants to use powerful open-source tools while not having to suffer technical headaches.
I like to say that Superengine lets you self-host apps without needing an Advil.
What’s going on under the hood?
Superengine runs containers. But it sets environment variables, ports and volumes programmatically. When you install an application, the app files contain all the information Superengine will need to handle this app. The user doesn’t have to know a thing about docker.
The vision
Our vision is to allow people from all backgrounds to make the cloud theirs, not just developers. Marketing people should be able to start a WordPress instance and make a landing page for their next thing without asking the dev team. Product managers should be able to start Docmost or other collaboration tools for their team without reserving engineering time. Even developers should be able to deploy dependencies without spending time on learning so much about them and how to deploy things in the cloud.
What’s up with Superengine?
We’ve released Superegine. The Cloud Edition is free in early access while we gather some feedback and add some of the last features. We plan on Superengine to remain free for self-hosting after the end of the Early Access program.
What to expect ahead
More apps for the whole company - e-mail, file storage, CRM, data analysis, community, collaboration…
Open source collection of app ports and documentation on how to port custom apps to Superengine
Additional features such as easily assigning domain names to websites
Discussion
Questions for the community:
- Have you faced any situation like that before? (self-hosting being too complex)
- What are the apps that you’d like to self-host?
- What would be the major benefit you’d like to get when using such a tool?
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