How can you host Deno in 2020
Hi everyone. If you recall, I did an issue on Deno back in May. If you didn’t read it, you can check out A trip to Deno-land in the archive. Since then, there have been a couple of minor releases and the ecosystem continues to grow. Today we will look at some options for hosting your app online.
The obvious option for hosting your app is to do it yourself. You can use PM2 or whatever other service runner you have now for your Node apps, and you can use them for Deno as well. But if you don’t want to manage your own server what should you do? Lets take a look at some other options of services that are rolling out Deno support. I will warn you that none of these services seem to have updated documentation for using Deno, but all claim to have some degree of support.
But before that, since we are talking about Deno with it’s first class TypeScript support, it is worth mentioning that TypeScript 4.0 was just released yesterday. I’m guessing we will see a version of Deno out fairly soon which uses this new release. Worth noting that 4.0 is just a natural progression from 3.9 and not any more breaking than any other version.
Vercel
Deploy web projects with the best frontend developer experience and highest end-user performance. I’ve spoken about Vercel before back when they were called Zeit. They have moved to a static site plus serverless functions model and those functions can be written in Deno, if you use this runtime adapter. It is written by someone who works for Vercel, but it doesn’t seem to be mentioned in their core documentation. I may try this one out myself. Vercel offers a very generous free tier.
Begin
Begin is a ridiculously quick platform for building modern web apps, sites, & APIs. Get started for free, no credit card required. Another service with Deno support and they even have a hello world example for it. From what I can see, Begin essentially manages AWS resources for you. And on their paid tiers, you also pay for the dedicated AWS resources. When you create an app, you are given the choice between Node and Deno, which seems to just give you a selection of starter repo/projects to choose from.
EvenNode
Flexible Node.js and Python web hosting in the cloud. Free MongoDB and custom domains are included with every plan. OK, full disclosure, apart from a trial, this service isn’t free, but it is quite cheap, particularly considering the fact that you get a MongoDB to use with your app. Also, they have a blog post claiming Deno support, but I can’t find out how exactly that works.