Dropship is a CLI for setting up your web app to deploy to a DigitalOcean Droplet vm, which famously starts at under $5/month.
Note: Dropship is currently a work in progress. Some features may not be fully implemented yet.
git push live
This will push your latest changes to your "live" server (or whatever you want to call it) and do all the build and deploy steps automatically.
The easiest way to use Dropship is directly from your Mac or Linux terminal -- no installation or dependencies needed. More info here
alias dropship="source <(curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jamonholmgren/dropship/main/dropship)"
Then run it from your project root:
dropship setup
Dropship will then start and walk you through setting up your project to deploy to a DigitalOcean Droplet.
If you encounter any issues while using Dropship, please check the following:
- (coming soon...)
If you still need help, please open an issue on GitHub. If I don't reply within a few days, please let me know on 𝕏. I don't mind, promise.
- Star this repo
- Try it out, contribute fixes
- Use my DigitalOcean affiliate link to get $200 in credit
- Send me coffee money via a Github one-time sponsorship
- dropship.jamon.dev (coming soon) - the home page for this tool
- REDACTED - internal Infinite Red video collaboration tool
- Yours here -- send a PR!
Hosting your own website on a virtual machine might sound a bit daunting, but it's really not too hard -- especially with Dropship!
Many other hosts (Vercel, Fly.io, Render) have strict requirements around their free / indie tiers or require setting up Docker if you want to do anything custom. This also includes DigitalOcean's own App Platform. Running it on DigitalOcean Droplets gives you more control.
And if your side project hits the top page of Hacker News, a Droplet is a fixed cost. It might go down temporarily, but you won't ever get a surprise bill for thousands of dollars!
CLI alias: Note that the dropship alias will only be available during this terminal session -- if you want it to stick around longer, just add it to your .zshrc or similar.
OS Support: Dropship is built for macOS and Linux only, although it may work on Windows via WSL or Git Bash -- contributions welcome for more robust Windows support!
Manual Install: If you aren't comfortable running Dropship directly from the internet:
Manual setup
Download it:curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jamonholmgren/dropship/main/dropship > ./dropship
Open the dropship file in your editor and review it. If you're comfortable with what it's doing, alias it:
alias dropship="source $PWD/dropship"
Copyright 2024 Jamon Holmgren. Licensed under a slightly modified FSL 1.1 + MIT Future license. See LICENSE.md.