Cloud9 alternatives after it moved to AWS Cloud9

As we approach the end of the month, the closer we are to the day when we will say goodbye the workspace we love on Cloud9 (c9.io). They will disable our access to the workspace there and we only have one option: download and migrate it somewhere else. But what Cloud9 alternatives after it moved to AWS Cloud9?

The first Cloud9 alternatives: AWS Cloud9

I had migrated some of the workspaces belong to the client’s project last week. It’s easy to migrate though there are some technical difficulties.

It is true that I had some hassles to resize the storage of that new AWS C9 Workspace. You may read the details of the story on this post.

Putting aside the hassles I have with resizing the storage, it looks like the AWS Cloud9 is the most viable option for Cloud9 replacement because:

• It just copies everything on your old workspace to a new one. I was being literal here. Everything is just like it was on the old c9.

• The new workspace on AWS Cloud9 had exactly the same UI as the old one so this reduces the effort and time to learn it.

• This new AWS Cloud9 will run on the top of AWS EC2 instance. This means, there’s a flexibility to resize or downsize anything there to fit our needs.

• It allows you to pay as you go. But, this can be a huge cost if your projects use it heavily. To decide, you need to make a calculation about how long you’re going to use it per month and calculate the cost from there. Then, we can compare it with other vendor’s cost like Repl.it which starts from $7/month.

• By default, it will turn off itself by 30 minutes to save the costs.

• You will have your IDE under your AWS account. Reducing the need to login to somewhere else to just work on it.

Repl.it

Another alternative is Repl.it. I had written a review at a glance how I tried their IDE for a Ruby on Rails application set up.

They also provided a good and fast interface. Some drawbacks are:

• You may need to move manually and set up the new workspace with some packages you need. As a comparison, when I migrated a Ruby on Rails workspace to AWS Cloud9, the RVM and all gems are already installed there. All I need was just to take care of migrating the database.

• Need to put some time and effort to adapt to the new UI. Though I honestly admitted that ReplIt UI is much faster and more responsive than AWS C9.

• Depending on your cost calculation, you may pay less than $7/month on AWS Cloud9. Yet, the starter price for ReplIt IDE is $7/month.

Gitpod

I also had written about Gitpod in the past. Like ReplIt, if you choose to go with Gitpod, we need to consider some drawbacks like:

• The cost. The price starts at $9/month. However, they limit you for 100 hours per month. For unlimited working hours, you need to pay $39/month.

• Like ReplIt, there is also the need to move everything manually there. But if everything is already on Github, you’ll set. Just launch Gitpod and it will work seamlessly.

• I haven’t mentioned that we also need to spend some time and effort to adapt to this new workspace.

• What I love most: Gitpod works with Dockerfile. This means, write once and you can reuse it later. Your future self and future developers will thank you for this.

However, Gitpod does have a great point. It is integrated with Github seamlessly. Oh, if you decide to give it a try, you can use my Gitpod discount code to get 30% off for your first three months: KEVIN02.

Back to localhost

I had tried to install local Cloud9 in the past but it’s not as stable as its cloud counterpart.

But if the project can’t afford to pay for the migration, maybe the way to back to the localhost is the most viable alternative. One example of such a case is a small, personal project in which you don’t want the codes available publicly.

Otherwise, both ReplIt and Gitpod free tier would be sufficient for such a project.

So, those are the best candidates for Cloud9 alternatives, based on my experience. If you have more suggestions, then let me know on the comment below. Thanks!