Xojo Web Apps? Impossible

I have been enjoying programming web apps with SpiderBasic, NSB, LiveCode and Delphi-TMS for some time. Since I am an avid fan of Basic languages and Xojo in particular, I would love to program web apps in Xojo as well. But I can’t! I can only do that by purchasing an expensive (for me) “Xojo Cloud” subscription in addition to my Xojo Web license. With all the other tools mentioned earlier, I can easily place deployable projects on my web hosts via FileZilla (with none being more expensive than 10 €) and thus make them run on the web. Only with Xojo this does not work. This is in my eyes a fat deficit and almost a stop! for my Xojo web app development. Too bad. :frowning:

If Xojo Cloud is priced out of your range, you should check out @Tim_Parnell ’s Lifeboat. Using that you can easily deploy Xojo Web applications to a cheap VPS.

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Did you consider consulting the manual on how to deploy a web app to a custom server?

I’m curious what type of web host you currently have?

A cheap VPS at Vultr or Digital Ocean is only $5 or $6 per month (the $6 High Frequency servers are really good at Vultr) and they allow you to host anything. A lot of times, these virtual servers are actually less expensive than typical web hosting plans like offered by GoDaddy, etc. They are not difficult to setup and there are lots of good guides on Digital Ocean and other places to learn the steps necessary.

The recommendation for Lifeboat was a good one, since it makes deployment of a server and your applications extremely easy and is a very streamlined approach to deployment. Even if you were to use Lifeboat, I would still recommend learning how to setup the server from scratch so you know what is really going on behind the scenes. There a lot of good tutorials on setting up Python apps behind nginx and using Let’s Encrypt for free certs. These tutorials will all be applicable for setting up the Linux server - the only difference will be you will be using Xojo instead of something like Flask or FastAPI. In the end, you will be able to do everything that the typical web hosting plans can do - plus much, much more.

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Any application using a client-server model will require some sort of deployment, Xojo included.

  • Xojo Cloud makes this deadly simple
  • I know Lifeboat users are also really happy

If you need to be on budget, here are some guides to do it yourself:

You can also automate your deployment using Xojo Build Steps, or a dedicated app.

In any case, you’ll need to pay a monthly hosting fee to the provider you prefer.

If you are stuck with any step, feel free to ask in the forum.

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So far, reading the tutorials hasn’t gotten me much further. Could you tell me the specific title of the document you recommend?

Yes I tried that in the past as well. But apparently the Linux operating systems of the host servers I use were not supported. And you could not register more than one server at the time. If this is different now, it would be worth looking at it again. Thanks a lot for this hint anyway!

These suggestions sound very interesting, thanks for these tips. I will have a closer look at them!

My host costs $US7 per month and can handle as many Xojo standalone Web apps as I want. You’re not limited to Xojo Cloud for deployment.

It certainly makes sense to look deeper into the matter. Especially with the setup of servers. So far, I use the web hosts “Strato”, “LiveCloud”, “Volt-Server” and “Web-DE”, but I am somewhat dissatisfied with the latter, especially in terms of performance. But these providers are all quite cheap and especially the handling was very uncomplicated for me. You are certainly right that a deeper insight expands the possibilities. Thanks a lot!

If it is, then I desperately want to know what service you are using. :slight_smile:

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Lifeboat supports CentOS 7, Debian 9-11, and Ubuntu 18-22. A mixture of older and modern versions on some very stable flavors of Linux. Someone recently helped me discover that Strato changes the locale which upsets machine to machine communication, but this can be corrected.

This has always been available, however you need a professional license to do so.


My personal recommendation if you would like to use Lifeboat is to use either AWS Lightsail or Digital Ocean to host your app. I test Lifeboat with these providers regularly. You can select a data center closer to home for better response times. You can even host your normal website right next to your web apps on the same server using Lifeboat.

The tutorials and research materials that helped me build Lifeboat come from all over the web. Learning how to deploy and launch a Xojo Web app is one part, while reverse proxying is another part, and SSL yet another part. There is a lot of learning involved.

The links Ricardo offered are a great start. When I was first starting in on learning how to deploy, Anthony’s documentation on Let’s Encrypt was a huge help. Being fluent in google-fu is unfortunately a huge part of gathering all the information you need.


If you have any questions or need assistance with Lifeboat please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by email directly support@strawberrysw.com

While you’re on your adventures learning about deployment, if you get stuck on something I’m sure the folks here would be happy to help. To get a good answer you’ve got to ask a good question, so learn as much as you can and be specific!

Best wishes,
Tim Parnell

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I was a total (=100%) noob when it came to Linux and servers but this tutorial helped me set up a server and deploy several Xojo WebApps:
https://xojo.jeannot-muller.com/how-to-build-a-linux-server-for-xojo-web-2-ad9e54ae8b9a

I also learned A LOT about Linux servers since.

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