Just a quick note that the list of applications for Fly.io at the end of this post was taken from our Launch HN --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616857 --- and we've changed (expanded) since then.
When we launched, we didn't do persistent storage for instances, so it didn't make as much sense to run ordinary apps here; rather, the idea was that you'd run your full-stack app somewhere like us-east-1, and carve off performance-sensitive bits and run them on Fly.io. That's "edge computing".
But a bit over a year ago, we added persistent volumes, and then we built Fly Postgres on top of it. You can store files on Fly.io or use a bunch of different databases, some of which we support directly. So it makes a lot more sense to run arbitrary applications, like a Rails or Elixir app, which is not something we would have said back in March 2020.
When we launched, we didn't do persistent storage for instances, so it didn't make as much sense to run ordinary apps here; rather, the idea was that you'd run your full-stack app somewhere like us-east-1, and carve off performance-sensitive bits and run them on Fly.io. That's "edge computing".
But a bit over a year ago, we added persistent volumes, and then we built Fly Postgres on top of it. You can store files on Fly.io or use a bunch of different databases, some of which we support directly. So it makes a lot more sense to run arbitrary applications, like a Rails or Elixir app, which is not something we would have said back in March 2020.