I’ve been working on Skyflares, a hosting platform designed to make deploying and managing Discord bots as simple as possible.
The idea started with a simple problem:
Why does hosting a Discord bot have to be complicated?
A lot of the time, getting a bot online means dealing with SSH, Linux commands, virtual environments, systemd services, Git, dependencies, and keeping everything running 24/7.
I wanted to build something that handles most of that automatically.
Deploying from GitHub
One of the main features of Skyflares is GitHub-based deployment.
Instead of manually uploading files to a server, you can connect your GitHub account and deploy a repository.
Skyflares handles things like:
- Cloning the repository
- Creating an isolated Python environment
- Installing requirements.txt
- Configuring the service
- Starting the bot
- Managing the bot’s status
This means updating a bot can be as simple as pushing changes to GitHub and deploying the update.
Running everything on Linux
Skyflares currently runs on Linux using systemd to manage individual services.
Each hosted service gets its own environment and systemd service, which means one bot can be restarted without affecting the others.
This also makes it possible to automatically start services again after a server restart.
Keeping it affordable
Another major goal was keeping hosting accessible for smaller developers.
Skyflares currently has plans starting at £3/month, with larger plans available for projects that need more resources.
I don’t want hosting to be something where you have to spend a lot of money before you can even get your first bot online.
What’s next?
Skyflares is still actively being developed.
Some of the things I’m working on include improving the dashboard, making deployments more reliable, and adding more hosting options beyond Discord bots.
The long-term goal is to make Skyflares a simple place to deploy and manage different types of services without having to worry about the underlying server.
If you’re interested in trying it out:
I’d also be interested in hearing from other developers about what makes hosting frustrating for them and what you’d like to see from a hosting platform.
