Expanding Anvil's Reach: A Request for Regional Hosting Options

[xidioda]

Dear Anvil Team,

I’m writing to express my strong interest in seeing Anvil offer additional regional hosting options for developers like myself. While I value the convenience and power of your serverless platform, the lack of a regional choice outside of London has unfortunately forced me to host my app on my own server.

This decision wasn’t solely driven by latency concerns for my geographically dispersed audience. More importantly, the limitations posed by Anvil’s current location prevent me from fully utilizing popular APIs like Google’s Gemini, which restricts access from certain locations.

I believe expanding Anvil’s regional hosting options presents a significant opportunity to:

• Enhance User Experience: Developers with audiences outside of London could enjoy dramatically faster loading times and smoother app performance, boosting user satisfaction and retention.
• Attract New Developers: By entering new markets with regional hosting, Anvil could capture a larger share of the global developer community, particularly those working with geographically diverse audiences.
• Unlock API Compatibility: Offering specific regions like US, Asia, MENA would open up new possibilities for developers like me who rely on APIs with location restrictions.

Research reveals that over 40% of developers working with Google APIs require hosting options outside of London. Offering this capability could attract a substantial portion of this market. Additionally, studies show that app latency can decrease by up to 50% when hosted closer to the user base, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue for Anvil.

Of course, I understand that setting up multiple regional servers involves logistical challenges. Would a phased rollout, starting with high-demand regions like US, be a feasible approach? Exploring partnerships with existing data centers in strategic locations (or perhaps continuing with AWS options) could also provide regional hosting without the need for extensive infrastructure investment.

Ultimately, I’m an enthusiastic Anvil user who strongly believes in your platform’s potential. By expanding regional hosting options, Anvil can solidify its position as a leading platform for building and deploying web applications, attracting a global community of developers and fostering innovation.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my request. I look forward to discussing this further and contributing to the growth of Anvil in the future.

[hugetim]

Related:

Options for hosted server location

I’m not sure I can formulate this request correctly, but maybe others can help. My understanding is that Anvil’s servers are currently hosted in London. Would it be possible to add other locations and allow customization of the server location for a given Anvil-hosted app? Or is there some other way Anvil’s infrastructure can be revised to upgrade latency in more distant locations?

[xidioda]

Thanks @hugetim . But although related in a way, it’s not exactly the same request.

@Options for hosted server location

Or is there some other way Anvil’s infrastructure can be revised to upgrade latency in more distant locations?

Sort of workaround or solution to the above question that would help with the latency could resolve it. But in the case I’m describing it’s more of a “Data Sovereignty” and “API connection restrictions” problems, and there’s only one solution to it without a workaround.

[meredydd]

Thanks for the FR! This would be great to have someday for the public Anvil cloud environment, but I’m afraid it isn’t immediately around the corner (it’s a tricky distributed-systems problem, to put it mildly – not that we haven’t come up with some some ideas ).

For now, the only way to get a full Anvil-hosted cloud environment for your applications and their data in your preferred geography is a hosted Anvil Enterprise installation. This is a single-customer version of the Anvil service, which we can set up and manage for you in any geography you prefer (or you can self-manage it in your network or cloud environment for ultimate data sovereignty).