So you've just finished writing your application, and now you need to deploy it. You have several options:

• You can go with Kubernetes and Terraform. But the complexity of running this in production can be overwhelming even for a team of dedicated DevOps specialists. There are a lot of horror stories.
• Or you could go with Heroku. But if you're not willing to pay 5-10 times more for your infrastructure just because your application was easier to deploy, you're going to need something else.
• You could also choose Serverless framework or Firebase. But when your use-case evolves, and you need Containers, SQL database or Redis cluster, you're out of luck.
• Or you could configure everything yourself on AWS. But I believe you can spend your time more productively than reading 100s of pages of documentation trying to figure out how to setup IAM permissions, VPCs, Security groups, Route tables, Subnets and more.

Until now, you could choose either "powerful" or "easy". But today, you have another option.

Introducing Stacktape

Stacktape is a DevOps-free cloud framework made for developers. It allows you to develop, deploy and run applications on AWS. With 98% less configuration and without the need for DevOps or Cloud expertise.

Unlike with other solutions, you can deploy both serverless (AWS lambda-based) and more traditional (container-based) applications. Stacktape also supports 20+ infrastructure components, including SQL databases, Load balancers, MongoDB Atlas clusters, Batch-jobs, Redis clusters, Upstash Kafka & more.

Besides infrastructure management, Stacktape handles:

• source code packaging
• deployments
• local/remote development
• domain management
• and much more

Stacktape also comes with a VScode extension and local development studio (GUI).

Stacktape in action

To deploy a REST API to a production-grade infrastructure on AWS using Stacktape, you'll need just a few lines of configuration:

serviceName: expressjs-api

resources:
  mainApiGateway:
    type: http-api-gateway

  mainDatabase:
    type: relational-database
    properties:
      credentials:
        masterUserName: admin_user
        masterUserPassword: my_secret_password
      engine:
        type: postgres
        properties:
          primaryInstance:
            instanceSize: db.t2.micro

  apiServer:
    type: container-workload
    properties:
      resources:
        cpu: 0.25
        memory: 512
      containers:
        - name: api-container
          packaging:
            type: stacktape-image-buildpack
            properties:
              entryfilePath: ./src/index.ts
          environment:
            - name: DB_CONNECTION_STRING
              value: $ResourceParam('mainDatabase', 'connectionString')
          events:
            - type: http-api-gateway
              properties:
                containerPort: 3000
                httpApiGatewayName: mainApiGateway
                method: "*"
                path: /{proxy+}

(This example configuration translates to ~600-800 lines of Terraform or AWS CloudFormation)

To deploy your application, all you need is a single command:

Stacktape will handle the rest:

• Package your source code, resolve all of its dependencies and create a Docker image
• Push the Docker image to a pre-created container registry on AWS
• Configure and provision your infrastructure. Under the hood, Stacktape will create ~35-40 AWS resources, including VPC, security groups, IAM permissions, route tables and more
• Run your application

Conclusion

With Stacktape, you get best of both worlds - the simplicity of Heroku, and the power of AWS:

• Production grade and fully-managed infrastructure - scalable, reliable, secure and performant
• Significantly faster time-to-production (few hours to 5 days vs. 3-12 months)
• DevOps-free, developer-friendly experience
• Heavily-optimized and efficient deployments
• Future-proof solution that can scale to any project size
• Reliable, repeatable and auditable deployments
• Lower infrastructure costs

We'll be very happy if you give Stacktape a try and let us know what you think.
To get started, head over to stacktape docs.