Open and portable Postgres-as-a-service. Also available on Hetzner

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

A new managed PostgreSQL service built on top of Hetzner aims to offer a cheaper, more portable alternative to AWS-style databases, with promises of US regions, point-in-time recovery, upcoming HA, and popular extensions like PostGIS and pgvector. Commenters are particularly interested in its roadmap for object and block storage, self-hosting capabilities, and how easily it can replace offerings like RDS or DigitalOcean Postgres in real-world setups. Much of the debate centers on its Elastic v2 “source-available” license, with some welcoming transparency and protection against cloud giants, and others criticizing the use of “open” for software that is not OSI-approved open source.

General Reception & Interest

  • Many commenters find the offering promising, especially with Hetzner support and upcoming US regions.
  • Seen as an appealing, cheaper alternative to big-cloud managed Postgres and homegrown setups.
  • Some see strong potential if it expands into broader cloud-like functionality (e.g., “better OpenStack”).

Licensing and “Open” Terminology

  • Major thread on the term “open”: the control plane is under Elastic License v2, not an OSI-approved open-source license.
  • Code is “source-available”: users can view, modify, and redistribute it, but cannot run it as a competing managed service.
  • Confusion over “open” vs “open source” vs “source available”; some feel the marketing is misleading, others think it’s fair as long as “open source” isn’t claimed.
  • Edge case discussed: hosting client websites on top of the product appears permitted; running a direct competing DB-as-a-service is not.

Features, Extensions & Roadmap

  • Supports Postgres 16, multiple databases per instance, automatic backups, and point-in-time recovery with 1‑minute granularity; database “forks” from past points in time are supported.
  • HA is not yet available but is “very soon”; upgrades planned in time for PG 17.
  • PostGIS and pgvector are highly requested; targeted for addition in a few months. Currently mostly contrib extensions.
  • Resizing instances is currently manual and done via backup/restore workflows.

Pricing & Resource Model

  • Compared to DigitalOcean managed Postgres, a similar configuration in the same region is claimed to be roughly half the price.
  • Managed Postgres pricing is higher than raw VM pricing because it includes more disk and management.
  • Some frustration with storage-based pricing and minimum sizes; users want cheaper, storage-heavy tiers and fully decoupled compute/storage.
  • Team plans to decouple compute and storage once internal capacity balancing improves; hobby tiers are planned but with no timeline.

Storage Architecture & Infrastructure

  • Currently using an early, non-replicated internal block store; object storage (S3-like) is in active development and prioritized.
  • Longer-term plan involves SPDK-based custom block devices, including copy-on-access and later replication.

Cloud, Hetzner & Egress

  • Interest in more regions (including US) and in cross-vendor portability, though details on “portable” deployments remain unclear.
  • Concerns that using it from AWS will increase egress costs; others note this depends on overall architecture and that it can also reduce lock-in.

Self-Hosting & Alternatives

  • Product itself is source-available and self-hostable via its public repo.
  • Commenters also mention other self-hosted Postgres operators (e.g., Kubernetes-based) and a separate emerging self-hosted IaaS platform.