Recommendation: PikaPods

I've mentioned PikaPods twice before. Once in the context of my mailing list software that I host there, and again singing the praises of their support. But here's a proper mini-review, because it's a service that can save your small business a lot of time.

Let's say there's some software you want to run. This post was prompted by them mailing me to say that they now host SuiteCRM, which I've never used but sure looks like fancy CRM software and might be exactly what you need. It's open source, so you could install it yourself by simply:

  1. Provisioning a server. You'll need PHP, Apache, and MySQL running on there. Make sure you lock down remote SSH and don't log in as root!
  2. Downloading SuiteCRM and setting permissions with commands like sudo chown -R www-data:www-data ..
  3. Installing then configuring the database on localhost.
  4. Setting up a cron job using crontab -e -u www-data.

🫠

Now, I understood all that. And I'm not knocking the SuiteCRM team or their instructions: they look really clear. But I was born with a computer between my teeth and it's all I've ever known. You? Maybe not.

How's this instead.

  1. At PikaPods, search for SuiteCRM and click run your own.
  2. Choose whether to run it in the EU or US.
  3. Choose a username and password.
  4. Click Add Pod.
Screenshot of the PikaPod create window.

That's it. Your pod is now running at a URL like strong-chicken.pikapod.net. Just browse there and use it.

Screenshot of SuiteCRM running.
The leads are weak.

Sounds expensive?

It is as cheap as chips! This pod would cost US$3/month to run. And get this: they're billed by the hour, and you can turn them off! This means it's basically free to install a thing and play with it for a while to see if you like it.

Screenshot of the PikaPod admin window.

I've already deleted this one. That little experiment cost me $0.00415. (Not kidding.)

Beware: this isn't quite SaaS

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is what you're used to. Gmail is SaaS: you don't care about any of the technical details. You can't care about the details: Google won't let you.

This isn't quite that. You still have to think about your own backups, for example. That's mostly it, but that's important. Each Pod can back itself up to an S3 bucket, and if you need help with that, let me know.

If you want to 'self-host' apps in the simplest way possible for a very reasonable price, I can't recommend PikaPods highly enough.