Introduction:
Greetings, I am a college student that just finished a project for my software engineering class. This class was for my computer science degree. The assignment was to build netflix clone(video streaming app) in the browser. Since I am now done with the project, I am going to write down my thoughts on the platform. Here is the project. The relevant repos are MinflixBackend and minflixclient.

Starting:
I was originally choosing between render and railway for hosting the project. We were originally on google cloud, but google cloud is obscenely expensive, and we were burning through our free credits. So we had to move hosting somewhere else. The railway free tier was instrumental in me choosing the platform because I could write code, and test things with all the different features. The feature that mattered most was mounting volumes. I attached a volume with the films inside of it, so I could stream them to the browser with the api. I am aware that render has this, but railway actually lets you try it. Since I could try it on the free tier, I went and paid money to use the platform.

Railway Pros:
- I really like that I don't have to pay for builds. This was super helpful for testing with the project(I am aware you shouldn't have to test or iterate in production).
- The variable shares are incredible. The fact that database shares are automatically generated is super nice. It's even better when you get a visual indicator what is connected to what.
- The canvas is really cool. I like seeing services visually, and I really like making groups. That is a great feature.
- Removing deployments is also pretty easy. This was useful when I didn't want to showcase the app.

Railway Cons:
- Missing volume browser. I know you guys are working on a volume browser of some kind. I am really hoping it has the feature to upload files to the volume.
- Unable to unmount volumes outside of the terminal. You can't unmount volumes without using the terminal. I do not like this, I think you should be able to unmount volumes in the canvas without using the cli.

Railway Documentation Cons:
- Development Environment Documentation. The idea of having a dedicated environment for every pr or user is very compelling, but there is not a ton of documentation on how you would use this feature. It simply states that you can do it.
- Group Documentation. I liked the ability to create groups on the canvas. However, your documentation doesn't actually inform people you can do this. I had to discover it myself.

Final Thoughts:

- I like your platform, and I think it's well built. Your pricing model does a lot to mitigate the pain points of services like these.
- I know it is planned, but please think about finishing the volume browser. It would make things a lot better, and it would really improve your business model. One of the things I saw you guys advertise is how migrating to railway is easy, and can save money. Not being able to upload files to volumes makes this migration much harder.
- Another thing I would like to see you guys work on is your agency feature. In your documentation, you mention you can invite someone to a workspace and have them pay for it. That way you can manage your billing relationship with a client as an agency. This is great, and I think you should expand on this. Streamline this process into an "agency payment flow" or something. That way agencies can manage billing with clients much easier. I don't think there is a single hosting provider that does something like this. So you guys would have excellent market share if you build something like this.

Sendoff:
Thanks for reading, and good luck on building your apps and platform. I might host more apps on railway.