Running our own Free PeerJS Server

[JAA17]

Now the Free Heroku button has gone, can you please give a tutorial for us on how to set up our own permanent Free PeerJS Server? Where can we go?

Will the button to set up the GitPod PeerJS Server be a permanent server which is always on?

Once I click the Open in Gitpod button on the page:

https://github.com/peers/peerjs-server

t sets it all up fine. Also, when I type in the command npm install peer -g in the GitPod terminal, eveything appears to work and install.

But when I type peerjs --port 9000 --key peerjs --path /myapp it just says Error: Error: listen EAFNOSUPPORT: address family not supported :::9000 and freezes.

How can I get this to work?

Also how can I get this to be always on, even when I log out of GitHub?

[jonasgloning]

Gitpod is only for development, not a permanent hosting solution.

I would recommend the public server. If your project outgrows the public server, you will have outgrown any free hosting.

That said, here are some Heroku alternatives with a free tier; maybe there is something for you – but I have no experience with any of them. I can also recommend Oracle Cloud with its very generous permanent free tier, but it’s a bit more complicated to set up and maintain.

[jonasgloning]

The master branch is now deployed to fly.io using this config file and this GitHub Actions file.
Fly has a permanent free tier.

You can deploy your own server:

1. Create a new project directory
2. Create a Dockerfile in it that contains:

FROM peerjs/peerjs-server:latest

3. Install the fly.io cli
4. Sign up using fly auth signup
5. Create a project using fly launch
6. Change the internal_port property in fly.toml to 9000

[ga676005]

I visit their website and see We don’t offer a “free tier.”

[jonasgloning]

If you read a bit further: Instead, we offer some free resource allowances that apply to all plans, including the Hobby plan, and includes enough usage per month to run a small full-stack app, full-time, for free.