If you're looking for a good alternative to Heroku that allows you to deploy your applications for free, the answer is Render

This is a short guide for deploying a Node.js & Express Typescript application to render.

What you need

A Render account
A Github or Gitlab account
A computer with Node.js and NPM/Yarn

Creating the typescript app

Create a new node project

yarn init

Install typescript, express and typescript Node compiler and their types

yarn add typescript ts-node express
yarn add  @types/node @types/express -Dev

Once done, create a src/index.js file and paste the following into it

import express from "express";

const application = express();

const port = 3000;

application
  .get("/", (req, res) => {
    res.send({
      message: "Hello, World!",
    });
  })


application.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Application listening on port ${port}`);
});

In your tsconfig.json, add

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "outDir": "./build"
  }
}

You can run the application locally with

npx ts-node ./src/application.ts

Finally, let's deploy the application,

Add the following build and start commands to the scripts section of your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "tsc",
    "start": "node ./build/index.js"
  }
}

On Render, Create a new Web Service, choose the free package and give Render permission to access your repository.

Configure your app to use the following settings:

Environment: Node

Build Command: yarn;, yarn build

Start Command: yarn start

That's it, your application has been deployed for free on Render

Deploying a Nodejs Typescript application to Render

What you need

Creating the typescript app