I discovered Elixir six years ago, and it’s been one of my favorite languages since. It feels like cheating — fun, easy to write, and easy to reason about. I’ve spent more time and money on Elixir/BEAM content than any other language.

Elixir is often marketed as a tool for everyone — from solo devs to large teams — and I believe that, especially with tools like Phoenix, LiveView, Nerves, and Nx. With Phoenix, I can build full-featured web apps on my own with far less effort than in Go, JavaScript, or Rust.

But that’s where the smooth experience ends. Deployment feels clunky and inconsistent, especially compared to the elegance of writing Elixir or the convenience of modern serverless platforms. I don’t mind spinning up a VPS and throwing a container on it, but it feels primitive compared to what other ecosystems offer.

Serverless feels almost too good to ignore. Sure, there are concerns about vendor lock-in or surprise bills, but with open-source options and better billing safeguards, those risks are becoming manageable.

Last weekend, I was building something and wanted to use Phoenix — it would’ve been 10x easier and more enjoyable — but deployment made me hesitate. I ended up using Rust with Cloudflare Workers instead.

So here’s my question: is the Elixir core team or community working on simpler deployment solutions for solo devs — something like Kamal2, but for the BEAM? I get that orchestrating BEAM nodes is powerful and part of the magic, but for many solo devs, deployment feels like muddy plumbing compared to writing Elixir. And while BEAM might offer better performance-per-dollar on a VPS, that often misses the point — solo devs would rather save time and ship faster using platforms like Vercel or CF Workers.

TL;DR: Is anyone working on a Kamal2-style deployment tool for Elixir/BEAM to help solo devs harness its full power without the deployment headaches?