As of today blitz.cloud has officially launched. blitz.cloud is our own hosting platform: you claim an address like yourname.blitz.cloud and put your apps online under it, with HTTPS and with your data in the EU. Anyone has been able to sign up since 12 September, with no waiting list. The public beta ends today.
What blitz.cloud is
On blitz.cloud your apps run without you setting up or looking after a server. An app can come from the App Store, such as a password manager or an uptime monitor, installed with one click. You can also point it at a public GitHub project, which we build from its source, or at a ready-made Docker image. Databases can be added, and they are copied every night.
An app nobody has visited for two hours goes to sleep and wakes on the next visit. While it sleeps it holds no memory. Bots and background workers without an address never sleep.
Who it is for
blitz.cloud is separate from our project work for mid-sized companies. It is meant for developers with a side project or a small API, and for people who want to run tools like a password manager themselves without a server at home. If you care about your data staying in the EU, it is meant for you too.
If you would like us to run an application for your company, that is our cloud and hosting service (in German).
Free or Pro
The free plan costs nothing and doesn't end after a trial. It includes up to 15 apps, 2 GB of memory, 10 GB of storage and one managed database. You don't need to enter a credit card.
Pro costs 5 EUR a month including VAT, and you can cancel it any month. It gives you room for 50 apps, 4 GB of memory, 50 GB of storage and five databases. You can connect domains you own and keep apps awake, so the first visitor of the morning doesn't wait. Database backups are kept for 30 nights instead of 7. The details are on the pricing page.
What's new at launch
From today, Pro also copies the files your apps keep every night, such as uploaded documents or a password manager's vault. 30 nights are kept. You put a copy back from the app's settings, and if it was the wrong night, you can undo the restore. On the free plan we still back up databases only.
Before the launch we also went through the platform looking for security holes, and we rehearsed putting backups back, for our users' databases as well as for the platform itself. We have written before that a backup nobody has ever restored is only a hope. That applies to us as well.
Where your data is
blitz.cloud runs in a data centre in the EU. The nightly backups are kept apart from it, also in the EU. There is no US cloud provider underneath. We build and run the platform ourselves, as BlitzWorks UG in Regensburg. What is stored where is listed under data and GDPR.
How to start
On blitz.cloud you sign up with email, GitHub or Google and choose your address. Then you install an app from the App Store, or give it a GitHub project or a Docker image. Private GitHub projects don't work yet; that is what we are building next. What works today and what is still missing is on the what's live page, which we update with every release.