Intro
Last week I wanted to spin up an small WordPress site that I´m building for my fiancé, but what I’ve found was just to expensive for something that will get little to no traffic for months. Doing some reasearch I´ve found a cheap way host that site (with its DB), and also start any application that needs more than one service by using Docker Compose files.
These files define a set of services based on Docker Images, that you can easily connect together. There is plenty of templates out there: Wordpress, DBs, Elastic Stack, and much much more.
To cheaply do that, I just got a the smallest VPS and deployed there some Docker Compose files and some single Docker images. But I guess not everybody wants to go through the hassle of self hosting…
Is there a market for it?
So I solved this problem for me now, at a low cost, and I think deploying docker compose files cheaply could be sold as a service. Therefore, I bought a domain and quickly built a landing page using AstroWind (an Astro template).
The service is Docker Deploy. The idea is basically: you give me a Docker Compose file (with resource limits) and I host it for your (HTTPS included) for little money.
But before building anything, I need to check not only if there is interest in this idea, but also if someone is willing to pay for it. I’ve learnt that I must check this (even not so rigorously) the hard way, thanks to speakerhouse (a whole post series will follow soon). That´s why I’ve built the simplest landing page, avoiding wasting time in stuff that will give me no value.
The landing Page
When I said it’s the “simplest landing page”, I know I lied a bit. It can be simpler and uglier, but I don’t want people to bounce so quick 😅.
I think it should tell what I’m offering very clearl and offer an action for the people so I can track if there is any interest or not.
Tech stack
As said, the site is built with an Astro template that I’ve just cloned, and adjusted (deleting almost everything) to my needs. One week ago I didn’t knew about Astro, but is simple enough to get you going quickly (Why specifically Astro will come in a future post).
The site is deployed to my VPS using Coolify. To make the site load fast everywere in the world (not only in Europe, where it’s hosted), I use the free plan of Cloudflare.
I’ve added a “Join Waitlist” button in the site that leads to a Microsoft Form, which is not as fancy as Typeform, but is free and I fullfills my needs: see if someone is interested and get their contact data. The “get their contact data” might not be strictly necessary but I need a kind of commitment without asking for money just yet.
Also, I added Plausible analytics to see if people is entering the site and how quickly they bounce or click the form. This plausible server is also in my VPS for the same reason, I might get 0 traffic in the next months and I don’t want to pay for it before I’m making money.
Pre-launch
One the page was “ready”, I came across this X post by chance and replied it:
If you're building a new SaaS in 2024, I'd love to see your landing page (even if it's a "coming soon" page).
— Justin Jackson (@mijustin) January 4, 2024
Post a link in the replies! 🙏
For now that’s all the marketing I did, but I’ll see where else I can mention Docker Deploy to get some feedback. Let’s see what I find out the next weeks.