Show HN: The best, self-hostable, alternative to ugly URLs and url shorteners

Blazing‑fast, self‑hostable domain redirector.

Status: Pre‑alpha — interfaces and storage schemas may change.

• Instant redirects, zero cold starts. A tiny Go redirector returns 30x in a single lookup.
• Automatic HTTPS built‑in. Go redirector handles HTTPS for all your domains and subdomains directly via autocert—faster, simpler, one binary.
• Easy to self‑host. One‑command Docker Compose templates; multiple templates will be available.
• Hosted or self‑hosted. Use our hosted, horizontally‑scaled service (no setup), or run it yourself for free.
• Simple & powerful. Clean dashboard & API, 307/308 method‑preserving redirects, path/query controls.
• Portable & open. Docker‑friendly, cloud‑agnostic, MIT‑licensed.

Rediredge pairs a Go data plane with a Next.js control plane. The control plane manages users, domains, and redirect rules; the data plane serves production traffic with a single Go service that handles TLS and issues instant 30x responses based on a redis database (for extremely fast lookups).

• Data plane (edge):
  • Go redirector — handles TLS via autocert, reads a compact lookup model from Redis, and returns the redirect immediately.
• Control plane (dashboard & API):
  • Next.js app for auth, domains, tracking, and redirects; persists canonical configuration and publishes a read‑optimized view for the edge.

Principles

• The dashboard/API is never on the hot path for visitor traffic.
• Canonical config lives in Postgres; the edge reads a compact Redis view.
• TLS is handled directly by the Go redirector via autocert (ACME HTTP‑01); the redirector is stateless.
• Redirect analytics are logged asynchronously to Redis; a worker processes them in batches to update the database and Polar billing.
• Syncing via the Sync and Outbox Workers ensures data consistency from Postgres to Redis for configurations.

Deployment flexibility

• Control plane (Next.js, Postgres, Sync Worker): hosted by us or fully self‑hosted.
• Data plane (Go redirector, Redis): hosted by us (paid) or self‑hosted (free/cheaper).
• Self‑hosters run the data plane locally while connecting to our hosted control plane for management.
• Easily horizontally scale, just put a load balancer and spin how many instances of the go redirector you want

Use our hosted, horizontally‑scaled service. We operate a proxy tier that manages TLS/ACME and a fleet of Go redirectors. You bring your domains; we handle the rest (billing via Polar). Self‑hosting remains free.

Self‑host the data plane (redirector) while we manage the control plane (dashboard, database, sync). One‑command setup with Docker Compose.

Architecture

What you get

• Go redirector — Handles HTTPS via autocert (ACME HTTP‑01), stateless service, exposes 5499/5498.
• Redis — Stores redirect map, exposed with AUTH for our sync worker.

Setup

**📚 Full deployment guides available here

Run multiple instances of the Go redirector; place them behind your load balancer. Redis can be scaled with replicas or clustering, or some solutions like Upstash.

We use the Outbox Pattern so writes are durable and Redis updates are reliable and idempotent.

Key guarantees

• Idempotence: each rule carries a version; the worker only applies if the incoming version is not older than the stored one.
• Resilience: if Redis is down, events remain in the outbox and retry with backoff.
• Rebuild: a job can truncate the namespace and repopulate from Postgres at any time.

• Status codes: default 308 (permanent) and 307 (temporary), also 301, 302. Both preserve HTTP method and body.
• Path & query: choose to preserve or rewrite; subdomains only (apex support coming soon).

Example

• Horizontally scalable by design.

  • Scale the Go tier: add more redirectors; they are stateless and read from Redis.

• Multi‑region (optional):

  • Deploy Go redirectors in multiple regions; put a DNS policy (e.g., latency‑based) in front.
  • No anycast required for v1; the system still works great from a single region.

• Edge: Go redirector (TLS + ACME via autocert), Redis read model.
• Control: Next.js dashboard, auth, domains & redirects; Postgres (canonical), sync worker → Redis (read), analytics worker → Redis (logs).
• Monorepo: Turborepo; Bun scripts for dev/build/lint.

Common commands

• 0.1 (hosted preview): core redirector with built‑in TLS, dashboard (Next.js), TXT domain verification, usage metering → Polar billing**.
• 0.1.5: redirect verification
• 0.2: self‑hosting configuration
• 0.3: metrics dashboard, analytics
• 0.4 additional self‑host templates (Kubernetes), rebuild job, usage analytics pipeline, basic metrics export.
• 1.0: full docs, stable product.

Roadmap is indicative; items may shuffle as we gather feedback.

MIT