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Sumon
Sumon

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Why I Built a Lightweight Heroku Clone in Go?

#go #devops #selfhosted #webdev

If you are a developer, you probably have a graveyard of side projects.

For years, the formula for launching these projects was simple: push to Heroku, provision a free database, and forget about it. It just worked.

But things changed. The free tiers disappeared. Cloud hosting prices went up. Today, running a few hobby projects with a database and SSL on managed platforms (like Render, Railway, or Heroku) can easily set you back 30 to 50 a month.

I didn't want to pay a subscription fee for apps that only get a few hits a day. But I also didn't want to go back to the dark ages of manually SSH-ing into a VPS, configuring Nginx, writing systemd units, and setting up certbot for SSL renewals.

So, I decided to build a middle ground: Better-PaaS—a lightweight, self-hosted developer platform written in Go.

Here is why I built it, how it works, and the technical decisions behind it.

The Problem: The Hosting Gap
Developers today are caught between two extremes:

Managed PaaS (Heroku, Railway, Vercel): Amazing developer experience. Push to Git, and your app is live. The downside? It gets expensive fast once you exceed basic limits, add databases, or want custom domains on multiple services.

Raw VPS (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode): Incredibly cheap. A $5/month VPS can easily run 5 to 10 small apps. The downside? You have to set up Docker, manage reverse proxies, configure SSL, write deployment scripts, and handle backups manually.

I wanted the developer experience of Heroku with the cost of a $5 VPS.

While there are great open-source self-hosted solutions out there, some felt too heavy, consuming hundreds of megabytes of RAM just to run the administration dashboard. I wanted something written in a compiled, low-overhead language that could run on a server with just 1 GB of RAM.

Enter Better-PaaS: The Architecture
Better-PaaS is split into two components: a lightweight compiled Go control plane (the brain) and a clean Next.js dashboard (the face).

Under the hood, it coordinates three battle-tested open-source tools:

[ Git Push / Webhook ]
│
▼
┌───────────────┐
│ Better-PaaS │ ──► Reads code & auto-detects stack (Nixpacks)
│ Control Plane │ ──► Packages app into Docker container
└───────────────┘
│
▼
┌───────────────┐
│ Caddy │ ──► Configures reverse proxy & gets SSL
└───────────────┘

  1. Nixpacks (The Builder): Nixpacks inspects your source directory and automatically figures out how to build and run your app. Whether it's Next.js, Go, Python, Rust, or PHP, you don't have to write a Dockerfile.

  2. Docker (The Runtime): Every application runs inside its own isolated Docker container. Better-PaaS controls Docker via the Docker socket to spin containers up and down.

  3. Caddy (The Gatekeeper): Caddy acts as our reverse proxy. The moment a container starts, Better-PaaS tells Caddy to route traffic to it. Caddy automatically provisions and renews SSL certificates via Let's Encrypt.

*3 Technical Decisions I’m Proud Of
*

  1. Go for the Control Plane
    Writing the control plane in Go was a no-brainer. It compiles to a single static binary, starts instantly, and consumes virtually zero memory when idle. This ensures that 99% of your cheap VPS resources actually go to your applications, not the management software.

  2. SQLite with AES-256-GCM Encryption at Rest
    I didn't want users to have to manage a heavy database like Postgres just to store Better-PaaS settings. SQLite was the perfect fit. To make it secure, all environment variables and secrets stored in the SQLite database are encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM. If someone gets access to your backup, your credentials remain safe.

  3. Native Log Streaming and WebSockets
    Better-PaaS streams your build logs and runtime logs straight to your browser using WebSockets. You can watch your application build and start in real-time, just like you would on Heroku or Vercel.

Feature Tour
Since launching yesterday, the platform supports:

  • One-command installation: Install the whole stack on a clean Linux server in 60 seconds.
  • Auto-deploy on Git push: Native webhook integration.
  • Managed Databases: Provision Postgres, MySQL, or Redis in one click, complete with a built-in Database Explorer.
  • Resiliency: One-click rollbacks, persistent volumes, and scheduled database backups.
  • App Catalog: Deploy open-source presets (like Plausible Analytics, Uptime Kuma, or WordPress) instantly.
  • Try it or Star it!
  • Better-PaaS is open-source (AGPL v3) and free forever to self-host.

If you have a spare VPS lying around, you can install it with one command:

bash

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sumon-ohid/better-paas/main/install.sh | sudo bash

Check out the code and star the repository on
GitHub: github.com/sumon-ohid/better-paas
Read the documentation: https://better-paas.com/docs/quickstart

I'd love to hear your thoughts. What stack do you use to deploy your side projects?

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