Albert Oliva, founder of Enkihost

My name is Albert Oliva. I live in Finland, but I'm from Spain. I'm a developer with 14 years of experience, and now I'm working on my own products, Enkihost and Enkimail.

I always thought that hosting like Heroku is expensive, and I wanted to host my own apps on my own server. Then I realized I could create something similar to Heroku without billing a lot of money. It's for developers who have the same need: deploys with git push.

“I realized I could create something similar to Heroku without billing a lot of money.”

It's for Rubyists, indie hackers and solo builders. It handles the setup of your project really well: you only need to connect your GitLab or GitHub and deploy the app.

We launched a few months ago, and now we have 2 early adopters testing the site for free. MRR is 0.

MRR

€0

Early adopters

2

Free slots left

8

There are 8 more slots open if you want to try Enkihost for free for the next three months.

I did some campaigns on Facebook and TikTok, and people are reacting to the posts and saving them. I think I need to do more Google Ads.

Cold outreach on Twitter, Bluesky and Mastodon worked very well.

“Cold outreach on Twitter, Bluesky and Mastodon worked very well.”

The deployment pipeline. We're currently creating a Docker container that holds your application, so you can set up everything you need in the backend.

I want to be in a position where I can sustain myself only with the revenue from my projects, or at least half of that.

I was posting on Mastodon, asking for 10 early adopters, and I got 2 contacts.

Content on the blog, ads and a newsletter. I spend some money every month on ads.

Asking for early adopters on social networks.

“Asking for early adopters on social networks.”

I think the product works quite well and delivers on its promises. And the price is quite good: €9 for two apps, with Redis and PostgreSQL.

I used AI to help build my products, but AI isn't part of the product itself. Over the next few years, I think there will be an over-abundance of products, but also more people trusting the work of an AI.

Choose a technology that fits you. You don't have to choose a framework only because it's trendy. Read the docs and choose the stack you really like.

“You don't have to choose a framework only because it's trendy.”

• The Rails Way books
• Real-World Next.js by Michele Riva
• Learn Rails 6 by Adam Notodikromo

Don't be discouraged if your products don't take off right away. Be patient, and keep upgrading.

“Don't be discouraged if your products don't take off right away.”