Fade of Light：Glitch

Last night I saw an announcement on Glitch, it says they’re going to stop providing self-hosting services from Jul, 8. This could be really an important one, although I’m not a dev hosing all my apps on Glitch. What could this mean? For me, I don’t think it’s just a lost choice for Dev-Ops who are seeking for a free, easy-to-go hosing solution. It’s kind of ,departure of a friend.

In 2019, I started my first journey on web. One of my junior school teacher told me he built a translating app using web API. And he opened developer tool in browser. And so, I met Glitch in Edge developer tool. When I opened it excitedly, I saw Glitch. Then I had my first remixed project. And by the way, I knew Github then because the login page has an option to login “using Github”. But sadly, I lost that Github account because I couldn’t pass the 2FA after I reinstalled Windows which kept my 2FA keys before.

Can’t believe it’s been six years. It’s more popular than the first years. In that time I just thought it’s a new-born one, people barely knew it. And now it’s also rising a lot of fame.

So in the full blog it says a lot, and in conclusion, no money. The most worried situation finally happened. I can’t figure out what’s happening between Glitch and Fastly, but that’s the truth. They are gonna close it and delete all data, only keeps a forum. They don’t want to lose the community, I guess. But I just don’t understand why they are stopping paid plans either.

It’ll be the first time I experience an organization’s death. I’m already started wondering fates of other self-hosting platforms that provides free plans. Although we know they’re actually paying for our “free” usage, we prefer to choose free plans rather than paying for only a better one.

I read lots of replies under the blog. People are feeling sad, both the good Dev-Ops, and the scammers. Many people says thanks to Glitch, and some are worrying about how to download their hundreds of projects.

And by the way, I learned about Linux also from Glitch - the Terminal. And now I really appreciate it a lot.

For a period of time, Glitch was my first choice. But then many of its apps became badly slow or even unreachable(although it recovered one year later). And so, I turned for Netlify. And one of the reasons why I didn’t use Vercel is that its app sites can’t be reached in China.

In fact, most of the reliable free plans are provided by foreign companies, like Github, Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify, and Glitch. In fact, each free plan is enough for individual dev - it gives a lot. But they all have some limits to make it not your free vbs. Bound limitations, time limitations, disk limitations… They are trying to make their free plans looks different from paid ones. If I tell somebody I’ve got… and it’s free, he’ll definitely say “Wow, is it true? Don’t fool on me bro…”

I also want to talk about Chinese and foreign companies and their products. But I think I’ll just stop here. Maybe next time.

PS: Au revoir, Glitch!😭😭