GOD FIRST 💚 Founder & Dev Sharing real dev mistakes so you don't make them Building @symplaxhq
Lagos Nigeria
Joined October 2022
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I wasn't trying to build a startup.
I was just trying to deploy a contact form without losing my mind.
Hi, I'm David Adeyemi. A developer and founder.
Every client project ended the same way. The code was done. Tests passed locally. Then came the deployment.
SSH in. Configure Nginx. Set up PM2. Something breaks. Fix it. Update the app two weeks later. SSH back in. Something else breaks.
I got good at it. Really good.
But "good at suffering" is not a skill I wanted to keep sharpening.
Vercel made frontend feel like magic. Three clicks and you're live. I wanted that feeling for my own VPS.
Not AWS. Not some $50/month platform. My own cheap server where the dollar to naira conversion doesn't make me cry.
So I built @symplaxhq.
Connect your VPS with an IP and password. That's it. GitHub deploys, server hardening, databases, monitoring, all from a dashboard.
No more SSH holes. No more config nightmares. Just ship.
If you've ever deployed anything to a VPS and felt that pain, this is for you.
symplax.com
ALT The face behind the SSH nightmares 😂
Day 2 ✅
Two updates on @symplaxhq:
1. Your release command now runs BEFORE your new version starts. Migrations go first, in a one-off container with your env, volumes and network. If they fail, the deploy stops and your current version keeps serving. Apps that depend on migrations now deploy safely.
2. Uptime alerts. Symplax checks every app’s public URL once a minute. If it goes down, you get an email. When it’s back, you get another. No extra setup. Deploy and it’s watching.
we’ll be making fixes, changes, or features on @pxxl_space
everyday for the next 30 days.
any day we miss, we’ll give out 10 free .cv domains.
Day 1 💚
You can now pick your database version on @symplaxhq.
PostgreSQL 18, 17, 16, 15
MySQL 9, 8.4, 8.0
MariaDB 12, 11, 10
MongoDB 8, 7, 6
Redis 8, 7
Valkey 9, 8, 7
ClickHouse 24
Importing from Railway or DigitalOcean? Your database keeps its version.
we’ll be making fixes, changes, or features on @pxxl_space
everyday for the next 30 days.
any day we miss, we’ll give out 10 free .cv domains.
Taking this energy for @symplaxhq too.
30 days. Something shipped every day.
Day 1 starting tonight.
Let’s go 🙂↕️💚
we’ll be making fixes, changes, or features on @pxxl_space
everyday for the next 30 days.
any day we miss, we’ll give out 10 free .cv domains.
I almost shipped a feature nobody asked for last week.
Spent 3 days building a custom analytics dashboard for @symplaxhq .
Charts. Graphs. Retention curves. The works.
Then I asked 5 users what they actually wanted.
Not one of them mentioned analytics.
They wanted faster deployments and better error messages.
I deleted the whole thing and built what they asked for instead.
The hardest skill in building is knowing what not to ship.
Most developers know how to deploy an application.
But do you actually know what happens behind the scenes?
When you deploy a Node.js app, a few things typically happen:
1. Your source code is fetched from a repository.
2. Dependencies are installed.
3. Your application is built (if required).
4. A process or container starts your application.
5. A reverse proxy like Nginx routes incoming traffic to it.
6. Your domain's DNS points users toward the server.
That's the basic idea.
Deployment isn't magic. It's a series of steps working together to make your application accessible.
Understanding these steps makes debugging production issues a lot easier.
Switching platforms shouldn’t mean starting over.
Just shipped platform imports on @symplaxhq.
Move from Railway, DigitalOcean or Vercel to a server you own. Four steps. Nothing on your source platform is touched. Failed imports roll back cleanly.
On Render, one web service + a Postgres database + Redis costs $54/month minimum. Each service billed separately.
A Spark server on Symplax gives you 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD. Run all three on it.
Coming next: Render, Heroku and Fly .io.
Your apps. Your server. Your data.
14 months of silence.
One week of nothing.
Then one sentence that changed everything.
He wasn’t building for 3 people.
He was building for the one person who actually needed it. The other 2 just hadn’t found their reason yet.
Until now there was one way to deploy on @symplaxhq.
Connect a repository. Wait for a build.
We just added three more.
Deploy any Docker image:
Paste an image. Symplax pulls it, reads the port, and gets it running. Docker Hub, GHCR, or your own registry. No repo. No Dockerfile. No build.
Import a docker-compose file:
Point it at a repo with a compose file. Symplax reads it, provisions the databases, and deploys your app once everything is ready. App + Postgres + Redis in one go.
See what's already on your server:
Connect a server and Symplax shows what's running. Docker containers, PM2 processes, system services. Add anything to Symplax with one click without touching what's already there.
However your app exists today, Symplax should be able to run it. 💚
Dami got his first freelance client.
₦500,000 project.
He was so excited he started coding before the contract was signed.
6 weeks later, the client disappeared. 🧵
6 weeks of work. Gone.
Not because he was bad at his job.
Because he trusted enthusiasm over process.
The client's excitement felt like security.
It wasn't.