Now I have my own corner in the internet, where I can host all my shiny apps with full control. Once the server is up and running, I can control it using ssh (terminal), send/retrieve files with github/dropbox or rsync, and run code with Rstudio server, which is basically a Rstudio session in a browser. The best thing is that a server only costs $5 per month, with the first two months for free. Despite being a 2015 post, it works perfectly. While searching for alternatives, I’ve found this great post by Dean Attali that clearly explains the steps for setting up a web server in a virtual machine from Digital Ocean. You can host your own shiny app for free in but that comes with some usage limitations. A shiny app hosted in the internet is perfect for that. Since many researchers and students in Brazil are not knowledgeable in R, we needed to make it easier for people to use the software. The objective is to set a reproducible standard and facilite data acquisition of a large, and very interesting, dataset. I’m working in a academic project where we build a package for accessing financial data and corporate events directly from B3, the Brazilian financial exchange. In this post I’ll share my experience in setting up my own virtual server for hosting shiny applications in Digital Ocean.

R shiny server cost