Staging and live environments: test, then go live

Every app on DployHub comes with two environments: staging and live. Staging is where new versions land first so you can check them. Live is what your customers use. Each environment has its own address, its own environment variables and its own custom domain.

Addresses

When you name your app, it gets a slug, and the slug gives you two addresses:

live:     https://<slug>.apps.dployhub.com
staging:  https://<slug>-staging.apps.dployhub.com

Renaming the app later keeps the same addresses. You can also attach your own domain to either environment, see Custom domains.

How a version reaches live

1. 1

   Deploy to staging

   Every deploy, whether you click Deploy or push to GitHub, builds your code and releases it to staging.

2. 2

   Check it

   Open the staging address, try the change, and look at the Logs tab if anything seems off.

3. 3

   Go live

   Click Go live. We promote the exact image running on staging to live. There is no rebuild, so what you tested is exactly what customers get.

Going live is zero-downtime. The new container starts, we wait for it to answer on the health check path, then traffic switches and the old container is removed. If the new version does not come up, the current live version keeps serving.

If staging has nothing working yet, Go live shows: "Staging has no working version yet. Deploy to staging first, then go live."

Staging is free

Staging runs in a free, lightweight container with a fixed size of 0.25 vCPU, 256 MB memory and 1 GB storage. It is meant for checking changes, not for heavy load tests. You only pay for live, based on the resources you choose.

To save capacity, staging pauses after 7 days without a deploy and you get a "Staging stopped after a week idle" alert. Click Start to bring it back, or deploy again, which also restarts it and resets the 7-day clock. See Staging paused.

Separate settings per environment

• Environment variables are separate. Point staging at test services and live at production ones. Use Copy from staging when setting up live.
• Custom domains are separate, for example staging.example.com and www.example.com.
• Storage is separate. Staging has its own 1 GB; it never touches live data.
• Restart, Stop and Start work per environment. A stopped live environment is not billed for the hours it is stopped.

Undoing a release

If a version you promoted causes trouble, you can roll back live to an earlier successful version in seconds from the Deployments tab.