Hosting platforms

You have quite a few options when it comes to hosting your bots.

Glitch: the “easiest way to build the app or bot of your dreams”
- requires a paid subscription to run bots continuously; pinging services, formerly a common and accepted practice, have been banned
- Hosting bots on Glitch
- Botwiki starter projects on Glitch
Repl.it: collaborative, in-browser IDE to code in 50+ languages
- free with pinging, or paid with always-on projects
- you can import code from a Glitch project
DigitalOcean: a popular VPS (Virtual Private Server), starts at $5/month (it’s also used to host this site; our referral link gets you $10 starter credit)
- How To Set Up a Node.js Application for Production on Ubuntu 16.04 (digitalocean.com)
- How to Deploy a Node.js App to DigitalOcean with a Free SSL Certificate (Video)
Heroku: offers free “Dyno hours” and a scheduler. See also:
- Configuration and Config Vars
- Intermediate Cron Jobs with Heroku
Pipedream: platform for automating workflows
Google Cloud Platform (Free Tier)
PythonAnywhere: “Host, run, and code Python in the cloud!”
AWS Lambda

Dexter: a platform that makes connecting third-party APIs easy
BOT libre!: create your own chat bot with real artificial intelligence, share it, embed it, connect it to the world
IFTTT : helps your apps and devices work together
Flow XO: connect your cloud apps together into automated workflows

Cheap Bots, Done Quick!: see tutorials and examples of bots created with CBDQ
Bracery: A collaborative site for making bots with a Tracery-like language with pre-loaded phrase lists.
Google Apps Script: see Bradley Momberger‘s blog for more details
tilde.town (Twitter and IRC bots)
@beaugunderson is offering to let people host bots on his Linode account
you can even use your Raspberry Pi