Local tools
Tools & hosting that make sense down under.
Real AUD pricing, Sydney-region providers, and timezone-aware notes — the stuff that's hard to find on US-centric blogs.
| Category | Tool | From (AUD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Dokku on a VPS (Vultr/DO Sydney) | ~A$9/mo | One box runs many apps; Sydney region keeps latency low for local users. |
| Hosting | Vercel | A$0 → A$30+/mo | Great Next.js DX; watch bandwidth + per-seat costs as you scale. |
| Hosting | Fly.io | ~A$5/mo | Edge containers with a Sydney (syd) region. |
| CDN / DNS | Cloudflare | A$0 | Free DNS + CDN with a Sydney PoP; covers most personal/community sites. |
| Database | Self-hosted MongoDB / Postgres | incl. in VPS | Run alongside Dokku on the same box for zero extra spend. |
| Postmark / Resend | from ~A$0–15/mo | Transactional email with AU-friendly deliverability; free tiers cover newsletters at small scale. | |
| Monitoring | Uptime Kuma (self-host) | A$0 | Self-hosted status + uptime; pairs with the same VPS. |
Want the reusable setup files behind this? You can download the templates & configs, or see how it all fits together in the architecture deep dive.
Questions, answered
Which hosting region should Sydney devs pick?
Anything in ap-southeast-2 (Sydney) — Vultr, DigitalOcean, AWS, and Fly.io all have a Sydney region. It shaves tens of milliseconds off every request for local users and keeps data on-shore.
Is a A$9 VPS really enough?
For community sites, side projects, and small SaaS — yes. A single small VPS running Dokku comfortably hosts several apps plus a database. You only outgrow it when you need real horizontal scale.