1. N8N
You know you don’t need to fool around with code anymore all the time, right?
The old way of connecting API’s was writing code but platforms like Power Automate, Zapier, Make.com and others have changed our way on how to connect API’s. Sure, the old way of doing things still exist but the new generation picks their own tools.
N8N can be compared to Zapier and Make.com but with the exception that it can be hosted on your own infrastructure. This is not suitable for all scenario’s but if you have a flow that needs to run a lot of times it makes sense to deploy it yourself to save money.
There is some documentation for other platforms and it easy to set it up on whitesky.cloud.
2. Retool
So you want to develop a nice interface for some internal applications? There are many tools available like:
- Betty Blocks
- Bubble
- Adola
All great tools but they lack a way to deploy on your own infrastructure. Retool is different and has options for self-hosting.
3. IOT - connectivity
If you are in the sensor (IOT) business you know that a subscription/publish model is used many times for sensor based applications. MQTT (invented in 1999 by IBM) is a standard to exchange realtime information between sensors.
There are enough public cloud choices out there but did you know you can host your own with Eclipse Mosquitto?
4. IOT - management
In 2015 two Dutch guys started The Things Network, a “free” way to exchange sensor data over long distances. The standard used is LoraWAN.
If you are into sensors and need to connect your in- and outdoor gateways you can opt to pick a self hosted network management solution. Chirpstack is a LoRaWAN Network Server which can be self-hosted on any infrastructure.
ChirpStack provides a web-interface for the management of gateways, devices and tenants as well to setup data integrations with the major cloud providers, databases and services commonly used for handling device data. ChirpStack provides a gRPC based API that can be used to integrate or extend ChirpStack.
5. WooCommerce
Yes you can signup for Shopify, Lightspeed or any other hosted option but in the end you probably want more control and flexibility.
From my experience with e-commerce I know you want to have deep access to your online store and be able to tweak the performance.
The combination of WordPress and WooCommerce is perfect to host yourself. Just make sure to have an expert to configure it.
When you hit the roof traffic wise and you need to scale, consider Kubernetes.
